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The Seaside Library, Pocket EdltionVTssn^ffW^'lilflPP'^y^nbscripriuii %r{) p^r aimmM 
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BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER: 

A FEW DAYS AMONG 
OUR SOUTHERN BRETHREN, 

BY HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.,>^ ^x 

Author of " From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn," '' From Egypt 

to Japan,'"' " On the Desert,'''' " Among the Holy Hills,''^ and 

" 2Vi,e Greek Islands, and Turkey after the War.'''' 



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in the fact that it is brimming over with reminiscences of the war, pictures of 
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all content now to belong to one general United States. Doctor Field has suc- 
ceeded wonderfully in investing with rare interest a somewhat prosaic and 
common tour by connecting it with the high sentiments of patriotism and na- 
tional faith. While the volume is written for the ordinary intelligent reader, 
may we venture to remark that it is just such a book as we would like to put in. 
the hands of the young; and which, though not prof essedly a religious book, 
Tvc-should be very glad to have shove out of the Sunday-school Library many- 
more pious but really less Christian and less useful volumes." 

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ate officers, the vivid contrast he draws between the horrors of battle and the 
present plenty and contentment of peace and prosperity, delight the /eader 
and lead to the regret that the volume is not twice as long as it is. . . . It is 
not merely a pleasing book of travel; it is a volume which should have a wide 
influence in further cementing the bonds which now hold the north and south 
together in the strength and affection of indissoluble union." 



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AN INLAND VOYAGE. 



Bt 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 



Thus sang they in the English boat, 

Marvell. 



,^V OFXO, 



^ NOV 24 1886 ;o) 



c>^: 



NEW YORK: 

GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 

17 TO 27 Vandewater Street. 



-f--'^*' 

Av 



EOBEET LOUIS STEVENSON'S WORKS 

CONTAINED IN THE SEASIDE LIBRARY (POCKET EDITION): 
NO. PRICE, 

686 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . . 10 
704 Prince Otto ......... 10 

833 Kidnapped 20 

855 The Dynamiter. By Robert Louis Stevenson and 

Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson . . . .20 

856 New Arabian Nights 20 

889 An Inhmd Voyage 10 



Eobert Louis Stevenson is, in his own way, one of the most per- 
fect writers living. 

Philip Gilbert Hamerton. 

' ' Travels with a Donkey ' is charming; full of grace, and humor, 
and freshness. Such refined humor it is, too, and so evidently the 
work of a gentleman. I am half in love with him, and much in- 
clined to think that a ramble anywhere with such a companion must 
he worth taking. What a happy knack he has of giving the taste 
of a landscape or any outdoor impression in ten words!" 



PREFACE. 



To equip so smair a book with a preface is, I am half 
afraid, to sin against proportion. But a preface is more 
than an author can resist, for it is tiie reward of his labors. 
When the foundation stone is laid, the architect appears 
with his plans, and struts for an hour before the public 
eye. So with the writer in his preface: he may have never 
a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in 
the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanor. 

It is best, in such circumstance, to represent a delicate 
shade of manner between humility and superiority: as if 
the book had been written by some one else, and you had 
merely run over it and inserted what was good. But for 
my part I have not yet learned the trick to that perfection ; 
I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my sentiments 
toward a reader; and if I meet him on the threshold, it is 
to invite him in with country cordiality. 

To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little 
book in proof than I was seized upon by a distressing ap- 
prehension. V? 

It occurred to me that I might not only be the first to 
read these pages, but the last as well; that I might have 
pioneered this very smiling tract of country all in vain, 
and find not a soul to follow in my steps. The more I 
thought the more I disliked the notion; until the distaste 
grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this 
preface, which is no more than an advertisement for read- 
ers. 

What am I to say for my book? Caleb and Joshua 



Vlll PREFACE. 

brought back from Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; 
alas! my book produces naught so nourishing; and for the 
matter of that, we live in an age when peojDle prefer a 
definition to any quantity of fruit. 

I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from 
the negative point of view, I flatter myself this volume has 
a certain stani]). Although it runs to considerably over 
a hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to 
the imbecility of God's universe, nof so much as a single 
hint that I could have made a better one myself — I really 
do not know where my head can have been. I seemed to 
have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be man. 'Tis 
an omission that renders the book philosophically unim- 
portant; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may please in 
frivolous circles. 

To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks 
already, indeed I wish I owed him nothing else; but at this 
moment I feel toward^ him an almost exaggerated tender- 
ness. He, at least, will become my reader — if it were only 
to follow his own travels alongside of mine. 

R. L. S. 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 



ANTWEEP TO BOOM. 

We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. A stevedore 
and a lot of dock porters took up the tv> o canoes, and ran 
with them for the sHp. A crowd of children followed 
cheering. The '* Cigarette ^^ went off in a splash and a 
bubble of small breaking water. Next moment the 
'* Arethusa " was after her. A steamer was coming down, 
men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the steve- 
dore and his porters were bawling from the quay. But in 
a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of 
the Scheldt, and all steamers, and stevedores, and other 
^long-shore vanities were left behind. 

The sun shone brightly; the tide w^as making — four 
jolly miles an hour; the wind blew steadily, with occasional 
squalls. For my part, I had never been in a canoe under 
sail in my life; and my first experiment out in the middle 
of this big river was not made without some trepidation. 
What would happen when the wind first caught my little 
canvas? I suppose it was almost as trying a venture into 
the regions of the unknown as to publish a first book, or 
to marry. But my doubts were not of long duration; and 
in five minutes you will not be surprised to learn that I 
had tied my sheet. 

I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; 
of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I 
had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little 



10 AK INLAND VOYAGE. 

and crank a concern as a canoe, and with these charging 
squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow the same 
principle; and it inspired me with some contemptuous 
views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to smoke 
with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a 
comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and 
gravely elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a common- 
jilace, that we can not answer for ourselves before we have 
been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and sure- 
ly more consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great 
deal braver and better than we thought. I believe this is 
every one's experience; but an ai^prehension that they may 
belie themselves in the future prevents mankind from 
trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad. I wish sin- 
cerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had 
been some one to put me in a good heart about life when I 
was younger; to tell me how dangers are most portentous 
on a distant sight; and how the good in a man's spirit will 
not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never deserts 
him in the hour of need. But we are all for tootling on 
the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man among 
us will go to the head of the march to sound the heady 
drums. 

It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went 
past laden with hay. Reeds and willows bordered the 
stream; and cattle and gray, venerable horses came and 
hung their mild heads over the embankment. Here and 
there was a j^leasant village among trees, with a noisy shi])- 
ping-yard; here and there a villa in a lawn. The wind 
served us well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel; 
and we were running pretty free when we began to sight 
tlie brick-yards of Boom, lying for a long way on the right 
bank of the river. The left bank was still green and pas- 
toral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here 
and there a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps 
there sat a woman with her elbows on her knees, or an old 



AJS^ INLAND VOYAGE. 11 

gentleman with a staff and silver spectacles. But Boom 
and its brick-yards grew smokier and shabbier with every 
minute; until a great church with a clock, and a wooden 
bridge over the river, indicated the central quarters of the 
town. 

Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one 
thing: that the majority of the inhabitants have a private 
opinion that they can speak English, which is not justified 
by fact. This gave a kind of haziness to our intercourse. 
As for the Hotel de la Navigation, I think it is the worst 
feature of the place. It boasts of a sanded parlor, with a 
bar at one end, looking on the street; and another sanded 
parlor, darker and colder, with an empty bird-cage and a 
tricolor subscription box by way of sole adornment, where 
we made shift to dine in the company of three uncommuni- 
cative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman. The 
food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional 
character; indeed I have never been able to detect any- 
thing in the nature of a meal among this pleasing people; 
they seem to peck and trifle with viands all day long in an 
amateur spirit: tentatively French, truly German, and 
somehow falling between the two. 

The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no 
trace of the old piping favorite, save where two wires had 
been pushed apart to hold its lump of sugar, carried with 
it a sort of grave-yard cheer. The engineer apprentices 
would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed to the bag- 
man; but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked 
us in the gas-light with a gleam of spectacles. For though 
handsome lads, they were all (in the Scotch phrase) 
barnacled. 

There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been 
long enough out of England to pick up all sorts of funny 
foreign idioms, and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which 
need not here be specified. She spoke to us very fluently 
in her jargon, asked us information as to the manners of 



12 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

the present day in England^ and obligingly corrected us 
when we attem2)ted to answer. But as we were dealing 
with a woman, i^erhaps our information was not so much 
thrown away as it appeared. The sex likes to pick up 
knowledge and yet j)i'eserve its superiority. It is good 
policy, and almost necessary in the circumstances. If a 
man finds a woman admires him, were it only for his 
acquaintance with geograjDhy, he will begin at once to build 
upon the admiration. It is only by unintermittent snub- 
bing that the pretty ones can keep us in our place. Men, 
as Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have said, *' are such 
encroachers. " For my part, I am body and soul with the 
women; and after a well-married couple, there is nothing 
so beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine hunt- 
ress. It is no use for a man to take to the woods; we 
know him; Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and 
had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. But there is this 
about some women, which overtops the best pymnosophist 
among men, that they suffice themselves, and can walk in 
a high and cold zone without the countenance of any 
trousered being. I declare, although the reverse of a pro- 
fessed ascetic, I am more obliged to women for this ideal 
than I should be to the majority of them, or indeed to any 
but one, for a si^ontaneous kiss. There is nothing so en- 
couraging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And when I 
think of the slim and lovely maidens, running the woods 
all night to the note of Diana's horn; moving among the 
old oaks, as fancy-free as they; things of the forest and 
the starlight, not touched by the commotion of man's hot 
and turbid life — although there are plenty other ideals 
that I should j^ refer — I find my heart beat at the thought 
of tliis one. 'Tis to fail in life, but to fail with what a 
grace! That is(fiot lost which is not regretted. And 
where — here slips out the male — where would be much of 
the glory of inspiring love, if there were no contempt to 
overcome? 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 13 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL. 

Next morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek 
Canal, the rain began heavy and chill. The water of the 
canal stood at about the drinking temperature of tea; and 
under this cold aspersion, the surface was covered with 
steam. The exhilaration of departure, and the easy motion 
of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported 
us through this misfortune while it lasted; and when the 
cloud passed and the sun came out again, our spirits went 
ivp above the range of stay-at-home humors. A good 
breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that bor- 
dered the canal. The leaves flickered in and out of the 
light in tumultuous masses. It seemed sailing weather to 
eye and ear; but down between the banks, the wind reached 
us only in faint and desultory puffs. There was hardly 
enough to steer by. Progress was intermittent and unsat- 
isfactory. A jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed 
us from the tuw-path with a '^ C'esf vite, mats c'est long. " 

The canal was busy enough. Every now and then we 
met or overtook a Ibiig string of boats, with great green 
tillers; high sterns with a window on either side of the 
rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in one of the 
windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about 
the day's dinner, and a handful of children. These barges 
were all tied one behind the other with tow ropes, to the 
number of twenty-five or thirty; and the line was headed 
and kept in motion by a steamer of strange construction. 
It had neither paddle-wheel nor screw: but by some gear 
not rightly comprehensible to the unmechanical mind, it 
fetched up over its bow a small bright chain which lay 
along the bottom of the canal, and paying it out again over 
the stern, dragged itseif forward, link by link, with its 



14 AJ^ INLAND VOYAGE. 

whole retinue of loaded scows. Until one had found out 
the key to the enigma, there was something solemn and 
uncomfortable in the progress of one of these trains, as it 
moved gently along the water with nothing to mark its 
advance but an eddy alongside dying away into the wake. 

Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal 
barge is by far the most delightful to consider. It may 
spread its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the 
tree-tops and the wind-mill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing 
through the green corn-lands: the most picturesque of 
things amphibious. Or the horse plods along at a foot- 
pace as if there were no such thing as business in the world; 
and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on 
the horizon all day long. It is a mystery how things €ver 
get to their destination at this rate; and to see the barges 
waiting their turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how 
easily the world may be taken. There should be many 
contented spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel 
and to stay at home. 

The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the 
banks of the canal slowly unroll their scenery to con- 
templative eyes; the barge floats by great forests and 
through great cities with their public buildings and their 
lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his "floating home, 
** traveling abed," it is merely as if he were listening to 
another man^s story or turning the leaves of a picture-book 
in which he had no concern. He may take his afternoon 
walk in some foreign country on the banks of the canal, 
and then come home to dinner at his own fireside. 

There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high 
measure of health; but a high measure of health is only 
necessary for unhealthy people. The slug of a fellow, who 
is never ill nor well, has a quiet time of it in life, and dies 
all the easier. 

I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occi^py any 
position under Heaven that required attendance at aii office. 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 15 

There are few callings, I should say, where a man gives up 
less of his liberty in return for regular meals. The bargee 
is on shipboard; he is master in his own ship; he can laud 
whenever he will; he can never be kept beating off a lee- 
shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as 
iron; and so far as I can make out, time stands as nearly 
still with him as is compatible with the return of bed- time 
or the dinner-hour. It is not easy to see why a bargee 
should ever die. 

Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beau- 
tiful reach of canal like a squire^s avenue, we went ashore 
to lunch. There were two eggs, a junk of bread, and a 
bottle of wine on board the " Arethusa;^' and two eggs 
and an Etna cooking apparatus on board the " Cigarette.^' 
The master of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs in 
the course of disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that 
it might still be cooked a la papier, he dropped it into the 
Etna, in its covering of Flemish newspaper. We landed 
in a blink of fine weather; but we had not been two min- 
utes ashore before the wind freshened into half a gale, and 
the rain began to patter on our shoulders. We saFas close 
about the Etna as we could. The spirits burned with great 
ostentation; the grass caught flame every minute or two, 
and had to be trodden out; and before long there were sev- 
eral burned fingers of the party. But the solid quantity of 
cookery accomplished was out of proportion with so much 
display; and when we desisted, after two applications of the 
fire, the sound Qgg was a little more than lukewarm; and 
as for a Ja papier, it was a cold and sordid fricassee of 
printer's ink and broken egg-shell. We made shift to 
roast the other two by putting them close to the burning 
spirits, and that with better success. And then we un- 
corked the bottle of wine, and sat down in a ditch with our 
canoe aprons over our knees. It rained smartly. Discom- 
fort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no 
nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous 



10 AN Il^LAND VOYAGE. 

business; and people well steeped and stupefied in the open 
air are in a good vein for laughter. From this point of 
view, even egg a la papier offered by way of food may i:)ass 
muster as a sort of accessory to the fun. But this manner 
of jest, although it may be taken in good part, does not in- 
vite repetition; and from that time forward the Etna voy- 
aged/like a gentleman in the locker of the " Cigarette. '^ 

It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch 
was over and we got aboard again and made sail, the wind 
promptly died away. The rest of the journey to Villevorde 
we still spread our canvas to the unfavoring air, and with 
now and then a puff, and now and then a spell of paddling, 
drifted along from lock to lock between the orderly trees. 

It was a fine, green, fat landscape, or rather a mere 
green water-lane going on from village to village. Things 
had a settled look, as in places long lived in. Crop-headed 
children spat upon us from the bridges as w^e went below, 
with a true conservative feeling. But even more conserva- 
tive were the fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us 
go by without one glance. They perched upon sterlings 
and buttresses and along the slope of the embankment, 
gently occupied. They were indifferent like pieces of dead 
nature. They did not move any more than if they had 
been fishing in an old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered, 
the water lapped, but they continued in one stay, hke so 
many churches established by law. You might have tre- 
panned every one of their innocent heads and found no 
more than so much coiled fishing line below their skulls. 
I do not care f or f your stalwart fellows in India-rubber 
stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon 
rod; but I do dearly love the class of man who plies his 
unfruitful art forever and a day by still and depopulated 
waters. 

At the lock just beyond Villevorde there was a lock mis- 
tress who S23oke French comprehensibly, and told us we 
were still a couple of leagues from Brussels. At the same 



AN IJ^LAJiTD VOYAGE. 17 

place the rain began again. It fell in straight, parallel 
lines, and the surface of the canal was thrown up into an 
infinity of little crystal fountains. There were no beds to 
be had in the neighborhood. Nothing for it but to lay the 
sails aside and address ourselves to steady paddling in the 
rain. 

Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of 
shuttered windows, and fine old trees standing in groves 
and avenues, gave a rich and somber aspect in the rain and 
the deepening dusk to the shores of the canal. 1 seem to 
have seen something of the same effect in engravings: opu- 
lent landscapes, deserted and overhung with the passage of 
storm. And throughout we had the escort of a hooded 
cart, which trotted shabbily along the tow-path, and kept 
at an almost uniform distance in our wake. 



THE EOYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE. 

The rain took off near the Laeken. But the sun was 
already down; the air was chill; and we had scarcely a dry 
stitch between the pair of us. Nay, now we found our- 
selves near the end of the Allee Verte, and on the very 
threshold of Brussels we were confronted by a serious diffi- 
culty. The shores were closely lined by canal boats wait- 
ing their turn at the lock. Nowhere was there any con- 
venient landing-jjlace; nowhere so much as a stable-yard to 
leave the canoes in for the night. We scrambled ashore 
and entered an estaminet where some sorry fellows were 
drinking with the landlord. The landlord was pretty round 
with us; he knew of no coach-house or stable-yard, or noth- 
ing of the sort; and seeing we had come with no mind to 
drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us. 
One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere 
in the corner of the basin there was a slip, he informed us. 



18 AK IXLAXD VOYAGE. 

and something else besides, not very clearly defined by him, 
but hopefully construed by his hearers. 

Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the 
basin; and at the top of it two nice-looking lads in boating 
clothes. The *' Arethusa *' addressed himself to these. One 
of them said there would be no difficulty about a night's 
lodging for our boats; and the other, taking a cigarette 
from his lips, inquired if they were made by KSearle & Son. 
The name was quite an introduction. Half a dozen other 
young men came out of a boat-house bearing the suj^er- 
scription Royal Sport Nautique, and joined in the talk. 
They were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; and 
their discourse was interlarded with English boating terms, 
and the names of English boat-builders and English clubs. 
I do not know, to my shame, any spot in my native land 
where I should have been so wai'mly i-eceived by the same 
number of people. We were English boating-men, and the 
Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks. I wonder if 
French Huguenots were as cordially greeted by English 
Protestants when they came across the Channel out of 
great tribulation. But, after all, what religion knits peo- 
ple so closely as common sport? 

The canoes were carried into the boat-house; they were 
washed down for us by the club servants, the sails were 
hung out to dry, and everything made as snug and tidy as 
a picture. And in the meanwhile we were led upstairs by 
our new-found brethren, for so more than one of them 
stated the relationship, and made free of their lavatory. 
This one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third and fourth 
helped us to undo our bags. And all the time such ques- 
tions, such assurances of respect and sympathy! I declare 
I never knew what glory was before. 

** Yes, yes, the Royal Sport ISi antique is the oldest club 
in Belgium.'' 

" We number two hundred." 

*' We " — this is not a substantive speech, but an abstract 



AN^ IKLAi^D VOYAGE. 19 

of many speeches^ the impression left upon my mind after 
a great deal of talk; and very youthful, pleasant, natural, 
and patriotic it seems to me to be — " We have gained all 
races, except those where we were cheated by the French/^ 

'* You must leave all your wet things to be dried. " 

** Oh! entrefreres! In any boat-house in England we 
should find the same. '' (I cordially hope they might. ) 

" En Angleterre, vous employ ez des sliding -seats, n'est- 
ce pas 9" 

'' We are all employed in commerce during the day; 
but in the evening, voyex-vous, nous sommes serieux/^ 

These were the words. They were all employed over the 
frivolous mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day; 
but in the. evening they found some hours for the serious 
concerns of life. I may have a wrong idea of wisdom, but 
I fchink that was a very wise remark. People connected 
with literature and philosophy are busy all their days in 
getting rid of second-hand notions and false standards. It 
is their profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged 
thinking, to recover their old fresh view of life, and dis- 
tinguish what they really and originally like from what they 
have only learned to tolerate perforce. And these Royal 
Nautical Sportsmen had the distinction still quite legible in 
their hearts. They had still those clean perceptions of 
what is nice and nasty, what is interesting and what is 
dull, which envious old gentlemen refer to as illusions. 
The nightmare illusion of middle age, the bear's hug of 
custom gradually squeezing the life out of a man's soul, 
had not yet begun for these happy-star'd young Belgians. 
They still knew that the interest they took in their business 
was a trifling affair compared to their spontaneous, long- 
suffering affection for nautical sports. To know what you 
prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world 
tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul 
alive. Such a man may be generous; he may be honest in 
something more than the commercial sense; he may love 



20 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

his friends with an elective, personal sympathy and not 
accept them as an adjunct of the station to' which he has 
been called. He may be a man, in short, acting on his 
own instincts, keeping in his own shape that God made him 
in; and not a mere crank in the social engine-house, welded 
on 23rinci]3les that he does not understand, and for purposes 
that he does not care for. 

For will any one dare to tell me that business is more 
entertaining than fooling among boats? He must have 
never seen a boat, or never seen an office, who says so. 
And for certain the one is a great deal better for the health. 
There should be nothing so much a man^s business as his 
amusements. Nothing but money-grubbing can be put 
forward to the contrary; no one but 

" Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From heaven," 

durst risk a word in answer. It is but a lying cant that 
would represent the merchant and the banker as people 
disinterestedly toiling for mankind, and then most useful 
when they are most absorbed in their transactions; for the 
man is more important than his services. And when my 
Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen from his 
hopeful youth that he can not pluck up an enthusiasm over 
anything but his ledger, I venture to doubt whether he 
will be near so nice a fellow, and whether he would wel- 
come, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched English- 
men paddling into Brussels in the dusk. 

AVhen we had changed our wet clothes and drank a glass 
of pale ale to the club^s 23rosperity, one of their number 
escorted us to a hotel. He would not join us at our din- 
ner, but he had no objection to a glass of wine. Enthu- 
siasm is very wearing; and I begin to understand why 
prophets were unpopular in Judea, where they were best 
known. For three stricken hours did this excellent young • 
man sit beside us to dilate on boats and boat-races; and be- 



AK INLAN'D VOYAGE. 21 

fore he left, he was kind enough to order our bedroom 
candles. 

■\Ve endeavored now and again to change the subject; 
but the diversion did not last a moment: the Royal Nauti- 
cal Sportsman bridled, shied, answered the question, and 
then breasted once more into the swelling tide of his sub- 
ject. I call it his subject; but I think it was he who was sub- 
jected. The " Arethusa," who holds all racing as a creat- 
ure of the devil, found himself in a pitiful dilemma. He 
durst not own his ignorance for the honor of old England, 
and spoke away about English clubs and English oarsmen 
whose fame had never before come to his ears. Several 
times, and, once above all, on the question of sliding-seats, 
he was within an ace of exposure. As for the *' Cigarette,^' 
who has rowed races in the heat of his blood, but now dis- 
owns these slips of his wanton youth, his case was still more 
desperate; for the Royal Nautical proposed that he should 
take an oar in one of their eights on the morrow, to com- 
pare the English with the Belgian stroke. I could see my 
friend perspiring in his chair whenever that particular tojDic 
came up. And there was yet another proposal which had 
the same effect on both of us. It apj)eared that the cham- 
pion canoeist of Europe (as well as most other champions) 
was a Royal Nautical Sportsman.' And if we would only 
wait until the Sunday, this infernal paddler would be so 
condescending as to accompany us on our next stage. 
Neither of us had the least desire to drive the coursers of 
the sun against Apollo. 

When the young man was gone, we countermanded our 
candles, and ordered some brandy and water. The great 
billows had gone over our head. The Royal Nautical 
Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a man would wish 
to see, but they were a trifle too young and a thought too 
nautical for us. We began to see that we were old and 
cynical; we liked ease and the agreeable rambling of the 
human mind about this and the other subject; we did not 



22 AN INLA^^D VOYAGE. 

want to disgrace our native land by messing at eight, ot 
toiling pitifully in the wake of the champion canoeist. In 
short, we had recourse to flight. It seemed ungrateful, 
but we tried to make that good on a card loaded with sin- 
cere compliments. And indeed it was no time for scruples; 
we seemed to feel the hot breath of the champion on our 
necks. 



AT MAUBEUGE. 

Partly from the terror we had of our good friends the 
Royal Nauticals, partly from the fact that there were no 
fewer than fifty-five locks between Brussels and Charleroi, 
we concluded that we should travel by train across the 
frontier, boats and all. Fifty-five locks in a day^s journey 
was pretty well tantamount to trudging the whole distance 
on foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an object of 
astonishment to the trees on the canal side, and of honest 
derision to all right-thinking children. 

To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter 
for the '' Arethusa."' He is, somehow or other, a marked 
man for the official eye. Wherever he journeys, there are 
the officers gathered together. Treaties are solemnly signed, 
foreign ministers, embassadors, and consuls sit throned in 
state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters on 
all the winds of heaven. Under these safeguards, portly 
clergymen, school- mis tresses, gentlemen in gray tweed suits, 
and all the ruck and rabble of British touristry pour un- 
hindered, Murray in hand, over the railways of the Conti- 
nent, and yet the slim person of the *^ Arethusa " is taken in 
the meshes, while those great fish go on their way rejoicing. 
If he travels without a passport, he is a cast, without any 
figure about the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his pa- 
pers are in order, he is suffered to go his way indeed, but 
not until he has been humiliated by a general incredulity. 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 23 

He is a born British subject, yet he has never succeeded in 
persuading a single official of his nationahty. He flatters 
himself he is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely known 
for anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and 
disreputable means of livelihood but has been attributed to 
him in some heat of official or popular distrust. 

For the life of me I can not understand it. I, too, have 
been knoll ed to church and sat at good men^s feasts, but I 
bear no mark of it. I am as strange as a Jack Indian to 
their official spectacles. I might come from any part of the 
globe, it seems, except from where I do. My ancestors 
have labored in vain, and the glorious Constitution can not 
protect me in my walks abroad. It is a great thing, be- 
lieve me, to present a good normal type of the nation you 
belong to. • 

Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Mau- 
beuge, but I was; and although I clung to my rights, I 
had to choose at last between accepting the humiliation and 
being left behind by the train. I was sorry to give way, 
but I wanted to get to Maubeuge. 

Maubeuge is a fortified town with a very good inn, the 
Grand Cerf. It seemed to be inhabited princijDally by 
soldiers and bagmen; at least, these were all that we saw 
except the hotel servants. We had to stay therg some time, 
for the canoes were in no hurry to follow us, and at last 
stuck hopelessly in the custom-house until we went back to 
liberate them. There was nothing to do, nothing to see. 
AVe had good meals, which was a great matter, but that 
was all. 

The '' Cigarette *' was nearly taken up upon a charge of 
drawing the fortifications; a feat of which he w^as hopeless- 
ly incapable. And besides, as I sui^jDOse each belligerent 
nation has a plan of the other^s fortified i3laces already, 
these precautions are of the nature of shutting the stable- 
door after the steed is away. But I have no doubt they 
help to keep up a good spirit at home. It is a great thing 



24 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other 
partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger. Even 
the Freemasons, who have been shown up to satiety, pre- 
serve a kind of pride; and not a grocer among them, how- 
ever honest, harmless, and empty-headed he may feel him- 
self to be at bottorii, but comes home from one of their 
ccenacula with a portentous significance for himself. 

It is an odd thing how happily two people, if there are 
two, can live in a place where they have no acquaintance. I 
think the spectacle of a whole life in which you have no 
part paralyzes- personal desire. You are content to become 
a mere spectator. The baker stands in his door; the colonel 
with his three medals goes by to the cafe at night; the 
troops drum and trumpet and man the ramparts as bold as 
so many lions. It would task language to say how placidly 
you behold all tliis. In a place where you have taken some 
root you are provoked out of your indifference; yoa have a 
hand in the game — your friends are fighting with the army. 
But in a strange town, not small enough to grow too soon 
familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself out for travelers, 
you stand so far apart from the business that you positively 
forget it would be possible to go nearer; you have so little 
human interest around you that you do not remember your- 
self to be a man. Perhaps in a very short time you would 
be one no longer. Gymnosophists go into a wood with all 
nature seething around them, with romance on every side; 
ic would be much more to the purpose if they took u^d their 
abode in a dull country town where they should see just sO 
much of humanity as to keep them from desiring more, 
and only the stale externals of man's life. These externals 
are as dead to us as so many formalities, and speak a dead 
language in our eyes and ears. They have no more mean- 
ing than an oath or a salutation. We are so much accus- 
tomed to see married couples going to church of a Sunday 
that we have clean forgotten what they represent; and 
novelists are driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, wheu 



AK IN^LAND VOYAGE. 25 

they wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man 
and a woman to live for each other. 

One person, in Maubeuge, however, showed me something 
more than his outside. That was the driver of the hotel 
omnibus; a mean enough looking little man, as well as I 
can remeniijer, but with a spark of something human in his 
soul. lie had heard of our little journey, and came to me 
at once, in envious sympathy. How he longed to travel! he 
told me. How he longed to be somewhere else, and see 
the round world before he went into the grave! " Here I 
am,'' said he. '* I drive to the station. Well. And then 
I drive back again to the hotel. And so on every day and 
all the week round. My God, is that life?" I could 
not say I thought it was — for him. ^ He pressed me to tell 
him where I had been, and where I hoped to go; and as he 
listened, I declare the fellow sighed. Might not this have 
been a brave African traveler, or gone to the Indies after 
Drake? But it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among 
men. He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he 
it is who has the wealth and glory. 

I wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the 
Grand Cerf? Not very likely, I believe; for I think he 
was on the eve of mutiny when we passed through, and 
perhaps our passage determined him for good. Better a 
thousand times that he should be a tramp, and mend pots 
and pans by the wa,y-side, and sleep under trees, and see the 
dawn and the sunset every day above a new horizon. I 
think I hear you say that it is a respectable position to drive 
an omnibus? Very well. What right has he who likes it 
not to keep those who would like it dearly out of this re- 
spectable position? Suppose a dish were not to my taste, 
and you told me that it was a favorite among the rest of 
the company, what should I conclude from that? Not to 
finish the dish against my stomach, I suppose. 

Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it 
does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not 



2(3 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste ; 
but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is ad- 
mittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and super- 
fluously useless, although it were as respectable as the 
Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the bet- 
ter for himself, and all concerned. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED. 

TO QUARTES. 

About three in the afternoon the whole establishment of 
the Grand Cerf accompanied us to the water's edge. The 
man of the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. Poor 
cage-bird! Do I not remember the time when I myself 
haunted the station, to watch train after train carry its com- 
plement of freemen into the night, and read the names of 
distant places on the time-bills with indescribable longings? 

We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain 
began. The wind was contrary, and blew in f arious gusts; 
nor were the aspects of nature any more clement than the 
doings of the sky. For we passed through a blighted coun- 
try, sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely enough 
diversified with factory chimneys. We landed in a soiled 
meadow among some pollards, and there smoked a pipe in 
a flaw of fair weather. But the wind blew so hard we could 
get little else to smoke. There were no natural objects in 
the neighborhood, but some sordid work-shops. A group 
of children, headed by a tall girl, stood and watched us 
from a little distance all the time we stayed. I heartily 
wonder what they thought of us. 

At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the land- 
ing-place being steep and high, and the launch at a long 
distance. Near a dozen grimy workmen lent us a hand. 
They refused any reward;" and, what is much better, re- 



AN INLA^^D VOYAGE. 27 

fused it handsomely, without conveying any sense of insult. 
*' It is a way we have in our country-side/^ said they. And 
a very becoming way it is. In Scotland, w'here also you 
will get services for nothing, the good people reject your 
money as if you had been trying to corrupt a voter. When 
people take the trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth 
while to take a little more, and allow the dignity to be 
common to all concerned. But in our brave Saxon coun- 
tries, where wc plod threescore years and ten in the mud, 
and the wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to burial, 
we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost 
offensively; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and 
an act of war against the wrong. 

After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind 
went do.wli; and a little paddling took us beyond the iron 
works and through a delectable land. The river wound 
among low hills, so that sometimes the sun was at our backs 
and sometimes it stood right ahead, and the river before us 
was one sheet of intolerable glory. On either hand mead- 
ows and orchards bordered, with a margin of sedge and 
water flowers, upon the river. The hedges w^ere of .2:reat 
height, woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms; and the 
fields, as they were often very small, looked like a series of 
bowers along the stream. There was never an}^ prosj^ect; 
sometimes a hill-top with its trees would look over the 
nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle distance for the 
sky; but that was all. The heaven was bare of clouds. 
The atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting purity. 
The river doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of 
mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles set the flowers 
si :'king along the brink. 

In the meadows wandered black and white cattle fantas- 
tically marked. One beast, with a white head and the rest 
of the body glossy black, came to the edge to drink, and 
stood gravely twitching his ears at me*as I went by, like 
some sort of preposterous clergyman in a play. A moment 



28 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

after I heard a loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the 
clergyman struggling to shore. The bank had given way 
under his feet. 

Besides the cattle, we saw no living things excei^t a few 
birds and a great many fishermen. These sat along the 
edges of the meadows, sometimes with one rod, sometimes 
with as many as half a score. They seemed stupefied with 
contentment; and, when we induced them to exchange a 
few words with us about the weather, their voices sounded 
quiet and far away. There was a strange diversity of opin- 
ion among them as to the kind of fish for which they set 
their lures; although they were all agreed in this, that the 
river was abundantly supplied. Where it was plain that no 
two of them had ever caught the same kind of fish, we could 
not help suspecting that perhaps not any one of them had 
ever caught a fish at all. I hope, since the afternoon was so 
lovely, that they were one and all rewarded; and that a 
silver booty went home in every basket for the pot. Some 
of my friends would cry shame on me for this; but I prefer 
a man, "were he only an angler, to the bravest pair of gills 
in. all God^s waters. I do not affect fishes unless when 
cooked in sauce; whereas an angler is an important piece 
of river scenery, and hence deserves some recognition 
among canoeists. He can always tell you where you are, 
after a mild fashion; and his quiet presence serves to ac- 
centuate the solitude and stillness, and remind you of the 
glittering citizens below your boat. 

The Sambre turned so industriously to and , fro among 
his little hills that it was past six before we dreV near the 
lock at Quartes. There were some children on the tow- 
path, with whom the " Cigarette " fell into a chaffing talk 
as they ran along beside us. It was in vain that I warned 
him. In vain I told him in English that boys were the 
most dangerous creatures; and if once you began with them 
it was safe to en* in a shower of stones. For my own part, 
whenever anytliing was addressed to me, 1 smiled gently 



AN INLAND YOYAGE. 29 

and shook my head, as though I were an inoffensive person 
inadequately acquainted with French. For, indeed, I have 
had such an experience at home that I would sooner meet 
mnny wild animals than a troop of healthy urchins. 

But I was doing injustice to these jDcaceable young Hain- 
aulters. When the " Cigarette " went off to make inquiries, 
I got out upon the bank to smoke a pipe and suiDcrintend 
the boats, and became at once the center of much amiable 
curiosity. The children had been joined by this time by a 
young woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and 
this gave me more security. When I let slip my first word 
or so in French, a httle girl nodded her head with a comi- 
cal grown-up air. *' Ah, you see/' she said, "he under- 
stands well enough now; he was just making believe. '' 
And the little group laughed together very good-naturedly. 

They were much impressed wlieu they heard we came 
from England: and the little girl proffered the information 
that England was an island '* and a far away from here — 
bien loin crici. '' *' Ay, jow may say that, a far away from 
here/' said the lad with one arm. 

I was nearly as homesick as ever I was in my life; they 
seemed to make it such an incalculable distance to the 
place Avhere I first saw the day. 

They admired the canoes very much. And I observed 
one piece of delicacy in these children which is worthy of 
record. They had been deafening us for the last hundred 
yards with petitions for a sail; ay, and they deafened us to 
the same tune next morning when we came to start; but 
then, when the canoes were lying empty, there was no word 
of any such petition. Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of fear 
for the water in so crank a vessel? I hate cynicism a great 
deal worse than I do the devil; unless, perhaps, the two were 
the same thing? And yet His a good tonic; the cold tub 
and bath-towel of the sentiments; and positively necessary 
to life in cases of advanced sensibility 



From the boats they turned to my»stume. They could 



% 



30 AN INLAND YOYAGE. 

not make enough of my red sash; and my knife filled them 
with awe. 

*' They make them like that in England/' said the hoy 
with one arm. I was glad he did not know how badly we 
make them in England nowadays. " They are for people 
who go away to sea/' he added, " and to defend one's life 
against great fish." 

I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure 
to the little group at every word. And so I suppose I was. 
Even my pipe, although it was an ordinary French clay, 
pretty well " trousered," as they call it, would have a rar- 
ity in their eyes, as a thing coming from so far away. And 
if my feathers were not very fine in themselves, they were 
all from over seas. One thing in my outfit, however, 
tickled them out of all politeness; and that was the be- 
mired condition of my canvas shoes. I suppose they were 
sure the mud at any rate was a home product. The little 
girl (who was the genius of the party) displayed her own 
sabots in competition; and I wish you could have seen how 
gracefully and merrily she did it. 

The young woman's milk-can, a great amj)hora of ham- 
mered brass, stood some way off upon the sward. I was 
glad of an opportunity to divert public attention from my- 
self and return some of the compliments I had received. 
So 1 admired it cordially both for form and color, teUing 
them, and very truly, that it was as beautiful as gold. They 
were not surprised. The thnigs were plainly the boast of 
the country-side. And the children expatiated on the 
costliness of these ampliorcB, which sell sometimes as high 
as thirty francs apiece; told me how they were carried on 
donkeys, one on either side of the saddle, a brave aparison 
in themselves; and how they were to be seen all over the 
district, and at the larger farms in great number and of 
great size. 



^^ 1 




Al^ li^LAJs^D VOYAGE. ol 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE. 

WE ARE PEDDLEES. 

The "Cigarette"^ returned with good. news. There 
were beds to be had some ten minutes' walk from where 
we were, at a place called Pont. We stowed the canoes in 
a granary, and asked among the children for a guide. The 
circle at once widened round us, and our offers of reward 
were received in dispiriting silence. We were ^Dlainly a pair 
of *' Blue-beards '' to the children; they might speak to us 
in public j^laces, and where they had the advantage of 
numbers; but it was another thing to venture off alone with 
two uncouth and legendary characters, who had dropped 
from the clouds upon their hamlet this quiet afternoon, 
sashed and bekni^ed, and with a flavor of great voyages. 
The owner of the granary came to our assistance, singled 
out one little fellow, and threatened him with corjioralities ; 
or I suspect we should have had to find the way for our- 
selves. As it was, he was more frightened at the granary 
man than the strangers, having jjerhaps had some experi- 
ence of the former. But I fancy his little heart must have 
been going at a fine rate, for he kept trotting at a respect- 
ful distance in front, and looking back at us with scared 
eyes. Xot otherwise may the children of the young world 
have guided Jove or one ol nis Olympian compeers on an 
adven ture. 

A miry lane led us up from Quartos, with its church and 
bickering windmill. The hinds were trudging homeward 
from the fields. A brisk little old woman passed us by. 
She was seated across a donkey between a pair of glittering 
milk-cans, and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with her 
heels upon the donkey^s side, and sca^ered shrill remarks 



)^e 



d2 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

among the wayfarers. It was notable that none of the 
tired men took the trouble to reply. Our conductor soon 
led us out of the lane and across country. The sun had 
gone down, but the west in front of us was one lake of 
level gold. The path wandered a while in the open, and 
then passed under a trellis like a bower indefinitely pro- 
longed. On either hand were shadowy orchards; cottages 
lay low among the leaves and sent their smoke to heaven; 
every here and there, in an opening, appeared the great 
gold face of the west. .. 

I never saw the *' Cigarette ^' in such an idyllic frame 
of mind. He waxed positively lyrical in praise of country 
scenes. I was little less exhilarated myself; the mild air 
of the evening, the shadows, the rich lights, and the silence 
made a symphonious accompaniment about our walk; and 
we both determined to avoid towns for the future and sleep 
in hamlets. 

At last the path went between two houses, and turned 
the party out into a wide, muddy high-road, bordered, as 
far as the eye could reach on either hand by an unsightly 
village. The houses stood well back, leaving a ribbon of 
waste land on either side of the road, where there were 
stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish heaps, and a 
little doubtful grass. Away on the left, a gaunt tower 
stood in the middle of the street. AVhat it had been in 
past ages I know not; probably a hold in time of war; but 
nowadays it bore an illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, 
and near the bottom an iron letter-box. 

The inn to which we had been recommended at Quartes 
was full, or else the landlady did not like our looks. I 
ought to say, that with our long, damp india-rubber bags, 
we presented rather a doubtful type of civilization; like 
rag-and-bone men, the '' Cigarette " imagined. '* These 
gentlemen are peddlers?" — Ces messieurs sont des mar- 
cliands? — asked the landlady. And then, without waiting 
for an answer, which% suppose she thought superfiuous iu 



I lar 

i 



AN IIs^LA:NrD VOYAGE. 33 

SO plain a case, recommended us to a butcher who lived 
hard by the tower and took in travelers to lodge. 

'iliither went we. Bafc the butcher was flitting, and all 
his beds were taken down. Or else he didn^fc like our looks. 
As a parting shot, we had, '*' These gentlemen are ped- 
dlers?'^ 

It began to grow dark in earnest. We could no longer 
distinguish the faces of the jDCople who j^assed us by with 
an inarticulate good-evening. And» the householders of 
Pont seemed very economical with their oil, for we saw not 
a single window lighted in all that long village. I believe 
it is the longest village in the world; but I dare say in our 
predicament every pace counted three times over. We 
were much cast down when we came to the last avherge, 
and, looking in at the dark door, asked timidly if we could 
sleep there for the night. A female voice assented, in no 
very friendly tones. AVe clapped the bags down and found 
our way to chairs. 

The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the 
chinks and ventilators of the stove. But now the landlady 
lit a lamj) to see her wqv^ guests; I suppose the darkness 
was what saved us another expulsion, for I can not say she 
looked gratified at our appearance. We were in a large, 
bare apartment, adorned with two allegorical prints of 
Music and Painting, and a copy of the " Law against Pub- 
lic Drunkenness. " On one side tiiere was a bit of a bar, 
with some half a dozen bottles. Two laborers sat waiting 
supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking 
lass bustled about with a sleepy child of two, and the land- 
lady began to derange the pots ujoon the stove and set some 
beef steak to grill. 

''These gentlemen are peddlers? '^ she asked, sharply; 
and that was all the conversation forthcoming. We began 
to think we might be peddlers, after all. I never knew a 
jDopulation with so narrow a range of conjecture as the 
inn-keepers of Pont-sur-Sambre. But manners and bear- 



34 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

ii]g have not a wider currency than bank-notes. You have 
only to get far enough out of your beat, and all your ac- 
complished airs will go for nothing. These Hainaulters 
could see no difference between us and the average peddler. 
Indeed, we had some grounds for reflection while the steak 
was getting ready, to see how perfectly they accepted us 
at their own valuation, and how our best politeness and 
best efforts at entertainment seemed to fit quite suitably 
with the character of packmen. At least it seemed a good 
account of the profession in France, that even before such 
judges we could not beat them at our own weapons. 

At last we were called to table. The two hinds (and one 
of them looked sadly worn and white in the face, as though 
sick with over-work and under-feeding) supped off a single 
plate of some sort of bread-berry, some potatoes in their 
jackets, a small cup of coffee sweetened with sugar candy, 
and one tumbler of swipes. The landlady, her son, and 
the lass aforesaid took the same. Our meal was quite a 
banquet by comparison. We had some beef -steak, not so 
tender as it might have been, some of the potatoes, some 
cheese, an extra glass of the swipes, and white sugar in our 
coffee. 

You see what it is to be a gentleman — I beg your j)ar- 
don, what it is to be a peddler. It had not before occurred 
to me that a peddler was a great man in a laborer^s ale- 
house; but now that I had to enact the part for the even- 
ing, I found that so it was. He has in his hedge quarters 
somewhat the same pre-eminency as the man who takes a 
private parlor in a hotel. The more you look into it tlie 
more infinite are the class distinctions among men; and 
possibly, by a happy dispensation, there is no one at all at 
the bottom of the scale; no one but can find some sujDerior- 
ity over somebody else, to keep up his pride withal. 

We were displeased enough with our fare. Particularly the 
" Cigarette;'^ for I tried to make believe that I was amused » 
with the adventure, tough beef -steak and all. According 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 35 

to the Lucretian maxim^ oar steak should have been flavored 
by the look of the other people's bread -berry; but we did 
not find it so iil practice. You may have a head knowledge 
that other people live more poorly than yourself, but it is 
not agreeable — I was going to say^, it is against the etiquette 
of the universe — to sit at the same table and pick your own 
sujDerior diet from among their crusts. I had not seen such 
a thing done since the greedy boy at school with his birth- 
day cake. It was odious enough to witness, I could re- 
member; and I had never thought to play the part myself. 
But there, again, you see what it is to be a peddler. 

There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country 
are much more charitably disposed than their superiors in 
w^ealth. And I fancy it must arise a great deal from the 
comparative indistinction of the easy and the not so easy 
in these ranks. A workman or a peddler can not shutter 
himself off from his less comfortable neighbors. If he 
treats himself to a luxury he must do it in the face of a 
dozen who can not. And what should more directly lead 
to charitable thoughts? Thus the poor man, camping out 
in life, sees it as it is, and knows that every mouthful he 
puts in his belly has been wrenched out of the fingers of 
the hungry. 

But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon 
ascent, the fortunate person passes through a zone of 
clouds, and sublunary matters are thenceforward hidden 
from his view. He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, 
all in admirable order and positively as good as nevv. He 
finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by 
the attentions of Providence, and compares himself invol- 
untarily with the lilies and the skylarks. He does not 
precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming 
in his open landau! If all the world dined at one table 
this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks. 



36 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBEE. 

THE TRAVELING MERCHANT. 

Like the lackeys in Moliere^s farce, when the true noble- 
men broke in on their high life below stairs, we were des- 
tined to be confronted with a real peddler. To make the 
lesson still more jDoignant for fallen gentlemen like us, he 
was a peddler of inj&nitely more consideration than the sort 
of scurvy fellows we were taken for; like a lion among 
mice, or a ship of war bearing down upon two cock-boats. 
Indeed, he did not deserve the name of peddler at all : he 
was a traveling merchant. I su23pose it was about half 
past eight when this worthy, M. Hector Gilliard, of Mau- 
beuge, turned up at the ale-house door in a tilt cart drawn 
by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants. He 
was a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with some- 
thing the look of an actor and something the look of a 
horse-jockey. He had evidently prospered without any of 
the favors of education, for he iidhered with stern simplicity 
to the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening 
passed off some fancy futures in a very florid style of archi- 
tecture. With him came his wife, a comely youug woman, 
with her hair tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son, a 
little fellow of four, in a blouse aiid military Jcepi. It was 
notable that the child was many degrees better dressed than 
either of the parents. We were informed he was already 
at a boarding-school; but the holidays having just com- 
menced, he was off to spend them with his parents on a 
cruise. An enchanting holiday occupation, was it not? to 
travel all day with father and mother in the tilt cart full 
of countless treasures; the green country rattling by on 
either side, and the children in all the villages contemplat- 
ing him with envy and wonder. It is better fun, during 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 37 

the holidaj^s, to be the son of a traveling merchant, than 
son and lieir to the greatest cotton sjoinner in creation. 
And as for being a reigning prince— indeed, I never saw 
one if it was not Master Gilliard! 

While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting 
up the donkey and getting all the valuables under lock and 
key, the landlady warmed up the remains of our beef -steak 
and fried the cold potatoes in slices, and Mme. Gilliard set 
herself to waken the boy, who had come far that day, and 
was peevish and dazzled by the light. He was no sooner 
awake than he began to prepare himself for supper by eat- 
ing galette, unripe jDcars, and cold potatoes, with, so far as 
I could judge, positive benefit to his appetite. 

The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her 
own .little girl, and the two children were confronted. 
Master Gilliard looked at her for a moment, very much as 
a dog looks at his own reflection in a mirror before he turns 
away. He was at that time absorbed in the galette. His 
mother seemed crestfallen that he should display so little 
inclination toward the other sex, and expressed her disap- 
pointment with some candor and a very j^roper reference to 
the influence of years. 

Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more 
attention to the girls, and think a great deal less of his 
mother; let us hope she will like it as well as' she seemed 
to fancy. But it is odd enough; the very women who 23ro- 
fess most contempt for mankind as a sex seem to find even 
its ugliest particulars rather lively and liigh/minded in their 
own sons. 

The little girl looked longer and with more interest, 
probably because she was in her own house, while he was a 
traveler and accustomed to strange sights. And, besides, 
there was no galette in the case with her. 

All the time of supper there was nothing spoken of but 
my young lord. The two parents were both absurdly fond 
of their child. Monsieur kept insisting on his sagacity* 



38 AK IKLAND VOYAGE. 

how he knew all the children at school by name, and when 
this utterly failed on trial, how he was cautious and exact 
to a strange degree, and if asked anything, he would sit 
and think — and think, and if he did not know it, " my 
faith, he wouldn't tell you at all — ma foi, il ne vous le 
diva -pas." AVhich is certainly a very high degree of 
caution. At intervals M. Hector would appeal to his wife, 
with his mouth full of beef -steak, as to the little fellow's 
age at such or such a time when he had said or done some- 
thing memorable; and I noticed that Madame usually 
230ohpoohed these- inquiries. She herself was not boastful 
in her vein; but she never had her fill of caressing the 
child; and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling 
all that was fortunate in his little existence. No school- 
boy could have talked more of the holidays which were just 
beginning and less of the black school-time which must 
inevitably follow after. She showed, with a pride perhaps 
partly mercantile in origin, his pockets j)i'6posterously 
swollen with tops, and whistles, and string. When she 
called at a house in the way of business it appeared he kept 
her comi^any; and, whenever a sale was made, received a 
sou out of the profit. Indeed, they sjDoiled him vastly, 
these two good people. But they had an eye to his man- 
ners, for all that, and reiDroved him for some little faults 
in breeding which occurred from time to time during 
su2)per. 

On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a 
peddler. I might think that I eat with greater delicacy, or 
that ni)' mistakes in French belonged to a different order; 
but it was plain that these distinctions would be thrown 
away uj)on the landlady and the two laborers. In all 
essential things we and the Gilliards cut very much the 
same figure in the alehouse kitchen. M. Hector was more at 
home, indeed, and took a higher tone with the world; 
but that was explicable on the ground of his driving a 
donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramj^ed afoot. I dare 



Ais" IXLAivD VOYAGE. 39 

say the rest of the company thought us dying with envy, 
though in no ill sense, to be as far up in the profession as 
the new arrival. 

And of one thing I am sure; that every one thawed and 
became more humanized and conversible as soon as these in- 
nocent peo^^le appeared upon the scene. I would not very 
readily trust the traveling merchant with any extravagant 
sum of money, but I am sure his heart was in the right ^^lace. 
In this mixed worldj if you can find one or two sensible places 
in a man; above all, if you should find a whole family liv- 
ing together on such pleasant terms, you may surely be 
satisfied, and take the rest for granted; or, what is a great 
deal better, boldly make up your mind that you can do 
perfectly well without the rest, and that ten thousand bad 
traits can not make a single good one any the less good. 

It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable lantern and 
went off to his cart for some arrangements, and my young 
gentleman proceeded to divest himself of the better part 
of his raiment and play gymnastics on his mother's lap, 
and thence on to the floor, with accompaniment of laugh- 
ter. 

**Are you going to sleep alone:'' asked the servant 



'' There's little fear of that," says Master Gilliard. 

" You sleep alone at school," objected his mother. 
" Come, come, you must be a man." 

But he protested that school was a different matter from 
the holidays; that there were dormitories at school, and 
silenced the discussion with kisses, his mother smiling, no 
one better pleased than she. 

There certainly was, as he jDhrased it, very little fear 
that he should sleep alone, for there was but one bed for 
the trio. We, on our part,, had firmly protested against 
one man's accommodation for two; and we had a double- 
bedded pen in the loft of tlie house, furnished, beside the 
beds, with exactly three hat pegs and one table. There 



40 AN IXLAXD VOYAGE. 

was not so much as a glass of water. But the window 
would open, by good fortune. 

Some time before I fell asleej) the loft was full of the 
sound of mighty snoring; the Gilliards, and the laborers, 
and the people of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with one 
consent. The young moon outside shone very clearly over 
Pcnt-sur-Sambre, and down upon the alehouse where all 
wc peddlers were abed. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED. 

TO LANDEECIES. 

lis the morning, when we came down-stairs the landlady 
pointed out to us two pails of water behind the street door. 
" Voik) de Veau 2)0ur vous deharhoialler ,'^ says she. And 
so there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while Mme. 
Gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and 
M. Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods 
for the day's campaign in a portable chest of drawers, 
which formed a part of his baggage. Meanwhile the ehild 
was letting off Waterloo crackers all over the floor. 

I wonder, by the by, what they call Waterloo crackers in 
France; perhaps Austerlitz crackers. There is a great deal 
in the point of view. Do you remember the Frenchman 
who, traveling by way of Southampton, was put down in 
Waterloo Station, and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge? 
He had a mind to go home again, it seems. 

Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes' 
walk from Quatres by dry land, it is six weary kilometers 
by water. We left our bags at the inn and walked to our 
canoes through the wet orchards unencumbered. Some of 
the children were there to see us off/, but we were no longer 
the mysterious beings of the night before. A departure is 
much less romantic than an unexijlained arrival in the 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 41 

golden evening. Although we might be greatly taken at a 
ghost's first appearance, we should behold him vanish with 
comparative equanimity. 

The good folks of the inn at Pont, when we called there 
for the bags, were overcome with marveling. At the sight 
of these two dainty little boats, with a fluttering Union 
Jack on each, and all the varnish shining from the sponge, 
they began to perceive that they had entertained angels un- 
awares. The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably 
lamenting she had charged so little; the son ran to and fro, 
and called out the neighbors to enjoy the sight; and we 
paddled away from quite a crowd of rapt observers. These 
gentlemen peddlers, indeed! Now you see their quality too 
late. 

The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching 
plumps. We were soaked to the skin, then partially dried 
in the sun, then soaked once more. But there were some 
calm intervals, and one notably, when we were skirting 
the forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a 
place most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn 
along the riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, 
and piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a 
forest but a city of nature "s own, full of hardy and in- 
nocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and 
nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves 
are the houses and public monuments? There is nothing 
so much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland; and a pair 
of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very small and 
bustling by comparison. 

And, surely, of all smells in the world the smell of many 
trees is the sw^eetest and most fortifying. The sea has a 
rude pistolling sort of odor, that takes you in the nostrils 
like snuff, and carries with it a fine sentiment of open water 
and tall ships; but the smell of a forest, which comes 
nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by many de- 
grees in the quality of softness. Again, the smell of the 



42 AX IIs^LAND VOYAGE. 

sea has little variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely 
chaugefiil; it varies with the hour of the day, not in 
strength merely, but in character; and the different sorts 
of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, 
seem to live among different kinds of atmosphere. 
Usually the rosin of the fir predominates. But some woods 
are more coquettish in their habits; and the breath of the 
forest Mormal, as it came abroad upon us that showery 
afternoon, ivas perfumed with nothing less delicate than 
sweet brier. 

I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are 
the most civil society. An old oak that has been growing 
where he stands since before the Reformation, taller than 
many sjoires, more stately than the greater 23art of mount- 
ains, and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and death, 
like you and me: is not that in itself a speaking lesson in 
history? But acres on acres full of such patriarchs con- 
tiguously rooted, their green tops billowing in the wind, 
their stalwart younglings joushing up about their knees; a 
whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving color to the 
light, giving perfume to the air; what is this but the most 
imposing j^iece in nature ^s repertory? Heine wished to lie 
like Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande. I should not 
fee satisfied with one tree; but if the wood grew together 
like a banyan grove, I would be buried under the tap-root 
of the whole; my parts should circulate from oak to oak; 
and my consciousness should be diffused abroad in all the 
forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of green 
spires, so that it, also, might rejoice in its own loveliness 
and dignity. I think I feel a thousand squirrels leaping 
from bough to bough in my vast mausoleum; and the birds 
and the winds merrily coursing over its uneven, leafy sur- 
face. 

Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, 
and it was but for a little v/ay that we skirted by its bound- 
aries. And the rest of the time the rain kept coming in 



AN- INLAND VOYAGE. 43 

squirts and the wind in squalls, until one's heart grew 
weary of such fitful, scolding weather. It was odd how the 
showers began when we had to carry the boats over a lock 
and must expose our legs. They always did. This is a 
sort of thing that readily begets a jDersonal feeling against 
nature. There seems no reason why the shower should 
not come five minutes before or five minutes after, unless 
you suppose an intention to affront you. The *' Cigar- 
ette " had a mackintosh which put him more or less above 
these contrarieties. But I had to bear the brunt un- 
covered. I began to remember that nature was a woman. 
My companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great satis- 
faction to my jeremiades, and ironically concurred. He 
instanced, as a cognate matter, the action of the tides, 
*' which,^' said he, "' was altogether designed for the con- 
fusion of canoeists, except in so far as it was calculated to 
minister to a barren vanity on the part of the moon. '^ 

At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I re- 
fused to go any further; and sat in a drift of rain by the 
side of the bank, to have a reviving pipe. A vivacious old 
man, whom I took to have been the devil, drew near, and 
questioned me about our journey. In the fullness of my 
heart I laid bare our plans before him. He said it was the 
silliest enterprise that ever he heard of. Why, did I not 
know, he asked me, that it was nothing but locks, locks, 
locks, the whole way? not to mention that, at this season 
of the year, we should find the Oise quite dry? ** Get into 
a train, my little young man,^' said he, ^' and go you away 
home to your parents.^' I was so astounded at the man's 
malice that I could only stare at him in silence. A tree 
would never have spoken to me like this. At last I got 
out with some words. We had come from Antwerp 
already, I told him, which was a good long way; and we 
should do the rest in spite of him. Yes, I said, if there 
were no other reason, I would do it now, just because he 
had dared to say we could not. The pleasant old gentle- 



44 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

man looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to my 
canoe, and marched off^ wagging his head. 

I \vas still inwardly fuming when up came a pair of 
young fellows, who imagined I was the " Cigarette's " serv- 
ant, on a comparison, I supjDOse, of my bare jersey with the 
other's mackintosh, and asked me many questions about 
my place and my master's character. I said he was a good 
enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the head. 
" Oh, no, no," said one, " you must not say that; it is not 
absurd; it is very courageous of him." I beheve these 
were a couple of angels sent to give me heart again. It 
was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old man's insinua- 
tions, as if they were original to me in my character of a 
malcontent footman, and have them brushed away like so 
many flies by these admirable young men. 

When I recounted this affair to the " Cigarette," '' They 
must have a curious idea of how English servants be- 
have," says he, dryly, " for you treated me like a brute 
beast at the lock." 

I was a good deal mortified; bnt my temper had suffered, 
it is a fact. 



AT LAXDRECIES. . 

At Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew; 
but we found a double-bedded room with plenty of fur- 
niture, real water- jugs with real water in them, and din- 
ner, a real dinner, not innocent of real wine. After having 
been a j^eddler for one night, and a butt for the elements 
during the whole of the next day, these comfortable cir- 
cumstances fell on my heart like sunshine. There was an 
English fruiterer at dinner, traveling with a Belgian fruit- 
erer; in the evening at: the cafe we watched our compatriot 
drop a good deal of money at corks, and I don't know 
why, but this pleased us. 



AN" INLAKD VOYAGE. 45 

It turned out that we were to see more of Landreoies 
than we expected; for the weather next day was simjDly 
bedlamite. It is not the place one would have chosen for 
a day's rest, for it consists almost entirely of fortifications. 
Within the ramparts, a few blocks of houses, a long row of 
barracks, and a church figure, with what countenance they 
may, as the town. There seems to be no trade, and a 
shop-keeper from whom I bought a sixpenny flint and steel 
was so much affected that he filled my pockets with spare 
flints into the bargain. The only public buildings that 
had any interest for us were the hotel and the cafe. But 
we visited the church. There lies Marshal Clarke. But 
as neither of us had ever heard of that military hero, we 
bore the associations of the spot with fortitude. 

In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and reveilles, and 
such like, make a fine, romantic interlude in civic business. 
Bugles, and drums, and fifes are of themselves most ex- 
cellent things in nature, and when they carry the mind to 
marching armies and the picturesque vicissitudes of war 
they stir \x^ something proud in the heart. But in a 
shadow of a town like Landrecies, with little else moving, 
these points of war made a jDroportionate commotion. In- 
deed, they were the only things to remember. It was just 
the j)lace to hear the round going by at night in the dark- 
ness, with the solid tram23 of men marching, and the start- 
ling reverberations of the drum. It reminded you that even 
this place was a point in the great warfaring system of 
Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about 
with cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name 
among strong towns.. 

The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable 
physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and 
comical shape, stands alone among the instruments of 
noise. And if it be true, as I have heard it said, that 
drums are covered with asses' skin, what a j^icturesque 
irony is there in that! As if this long suffering animars 



46 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

hide had not been sufficiently belabored during life, now by 
Lyonnese costermongers, now by presumptuous Hebrew 
prophets, it must be stripped from his poor hinder quarters 
after death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night after 
night round the streets of every garrison town in Europe. 
And up the heights of Alma and Spicheren, and wherever 
death has his red flag a flying, and sounds his own potent 
t uck upon the cannons, there also must the drummer boy, 
hurrying with white face over fallen comrades, batter and 
bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable 
(lonke3^s. 

Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than 
when he is at this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. We 
know what effect it has in life, and how your dull ass will 
not mend his pace with beating. But in this state of 
uuimmy and melancholy survival of itself, when the hollow 
skin reverberates to the drummer ^s wrist, and each dub-a- 
dub goes direct to a man's heart, and puts madness there, 
and that disposition of the pulses which we, in our big way 
of talking, nickname Heroism — is there not something in 
the nature of a revenge upon the donkey's persecutors? 
Of old, he might say, you drubbed me up hill and down 
dale and I must endure; but now that I am dead those dull 
thwacks that were scarcely audible in country lanes have 
become stirring music in front of the brigade, and for every 
blow that you lay on my old great-coat, you will see a com- 
i:idc stumble and fall. 

Not long after the drums had passed the cafe, the 
'* Cigarette '' and the ^' Arethusa '^ began to grow sleepy, 
and set out for the hotel, which was only a door or two 
away. But although we had been somewhat indifferent to 
Landrecies, Landi-ecies had not been indifferent to us. All 
day, we learned, people had been running out between the 
squalls to visit our two boats. Hundreds of persons, so 
said report, although it fitted ill with our idea of the town 
— hundreds of persons had inspected them where they lay 



AX INLAXD Y0yAC4E. 47 

ill a coal-shed. "We were becoming lions in Landrecies, 
who had been only peddlers the night before in Pont. 

And now, when we left the cafe, we were jDursiied and 
overtaken at the hotel door by no less a person than the 
Juge de Paix; a functionary, as far as I can make out, of 
the character of a Scotch Sheriff Substitute. He gave us 
his card and invited us to sup with him on the spot, very 
neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do these things. 
It was for the credit of Landrecies, said he; and although 
we knew very well how little credit we could do the place, 
we must have been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation 
so politely introduced. 

The house of the judge was close by; it was a well-ap- 
pointed bachelor's establishment, with a curious collection 
of old brass warming-pans upon the walls. Some of these 
we're most elaborately carved. It seemed a picturesque idea 
for a collector. You could not help thinking how many 
nightcaps had wagged over these warming-pans in past 
generations; what jests may have been made and kisses 
taken while they were in service; and how often they had 
been uselessly paraded in the bed of death. If they could 
only speak, at what absurd, indecorous, and tragical scenes 
had they not been present? 

The wine was excellent. AY-hen we made the judge our 
compliments uj)on a bottle, ''I do not give it you as my 
worst, ^' said he. I wonder when Englishmen will learn 
these hospitable graces. They are worth learning; they 
set off life and make ordinary moments ornamental. 

There were other Landrecienses present. One was the 
collector of something or other, I forget what; the other, 
we were told, was the principal notary of the place. So it 
happened that we all five more or less followed the law. 
At this rate the talk was pretty certain to become techni- 
cal. The '' Cigarette '^ exi^ounded the poor laws very 
magisterially. And a little later I found myself laying 
down the Scotch law of illegitimacy, of which I am glad to 



48 AK INLAND VOYAGE. 

say I know nothing. The collector and the notary, who 
were both married mvn, accused the judge, who was a 
bachelor, of having started the subject. He deprecated the 
charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just like all the men 
I have ever seen, be they French or English. How strange 
that we should all, in our unguarded moments, rather like 
to be thought a bit of a rogue with the women! 

As the evening went on the wine grew more to my taste; 
the spirits proved better than the wine; the company was 
genial. This was the highest water mark of popular favor 
on the whole cruise. After all, being in a judge^s house, 
was there not something semi-official in the tribute? And 
so, remembering what a great country France is, we did 
full justice to our entertainment. Landrecies had been a 
long while asleep before we returned to the hotel; and the 
sentries on the ramparts were already looking for daybreak. 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL. 

CANAL BOATS. 

Next day we made a late start in the rain. The judge 
politely escorted us to the end of the lock under an um- 
brella. We had now brought ourselves to a pitch of 
humility, in the matter of weather, not often attained ex- 
cept in the Scotch Highlands. A rag of blue sky or a 
glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the 
rain was not heavy we counted the day almost fair. 

Long lines of barges lay one after another along the 
canal, many of them looking mighty spruce and ship- shape 
in their jerkin of Archangel tar picked out with white and 
green. Some carried gay iron railings and quite a parterre 
of flower-pots. Children played on the decks, as heedless 
of the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Caron 
side; men fished over the gunwale, some of them under 



AN INLAiND VOYAGE. 49 

umbrellas; women did their washing; and every barge 
boasted its mongrel cur by way of watch-dog. Each one 
barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside until he 
had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on the 
word to the dog aboard the next. We must have seen 
something like a hundred of these embarkations in the 
course of that day^s paddle, ranged one after another like 
the houses in a street; and from not one of them were we 
disappointed of this accompaniment. It was like visiting a 
menagerie, the '* Cigarette'* remarked. 

These little cities by the canal-side had a very odd effect 
upon the mind. They seemed, '.\im their flower-pots and 
smoking chimneys, their washings and dinners, a rooted 
piece of nature in the scene; and yet if only the canal below 
were to open, one junk after another would hoist sail or 
harness horses and swim away into all parts of France; and 
the impromptu hamlet would separate, house by house, to 
the four winds. Q'he children who played together to-day 
by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at his own father's 
threshold, when and where might they next meet? 

For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a 
great deal of our talk, and we had projected an old age on 
the canals of Europe. It was to be the most leisurely of 
progresses, now on a swift river at the tail of a steamboat, 
now waiting horses for days together on some inconsider- 
able junction. We should be seen pottering on deck iii all 
the dignity of years, our white beards falling into our laps. 
We were ever to be busied among paint-pots, so that there 
should be no white fresher and no green more emerald than 
ours, in all the navy of the canals. There should be books 
in the cabin, and tobacco jars, and some old Burgundy as 
red as a November sunset and as odorous as a violet in 
April. There should be a flageolet whence the " Cigar- 
ette,'^ with cunning touch, should draw melting music 
under the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his 
yoice — somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and 



50 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

there a quaver, or call it a natural grace note — in rich and 
solemn psalmody. 

iVll this simmering in my mind set me wishing to go 
aboard one of these ideal houses of lounging. I had plenty 
to choose from, as I coasted one after another and the dogs 
bayed at me for a vagrant. At last I saw a nice old man 
and his wife looking at me with some interest, so I gave 
them good day and pulled up alongside. I began with a 
remark upon their dog, which" had somewhat the look of a 
pointer; thence 1 slid into a comi^liment of madame's flow- 
ers, and thence into a word in praise of their way of 
life. 

If you ventured on such an experiment in England you 
would get a slap in the face at once. The life would be 
shown to be a vile one, not without a side shot at your bet- 
ter fortune. Now, what I like so much in France is the 
clear, unflinching recognition by everybody of his own 
luck. They all know on which side their bread is buttered, 
and take a pleasure in showing it to others, which is surely 
the better part of religion. And they scorn to make a poor 
mouth over their poverty, which I take to be the better 
part of manliness. I have heard a woman in quite a better 
position at home, with a good bit of money in hand, refer 
to her own child with a horrid whine as ^* a i^oor man's 
child.'' I would not say such a thing to the Duke of West- 
minster. And the French are full of this spirit of inde- 
pendence. Perhaps it is the result of republican institu- 
tions, as they call them. Much more likely it is because 
there are so few people really poor that the whiners are not 
enough to keej) each other in countenance. 

The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I 
admired their state. They understood perfectly well, they 
told me, how monsieur envied them. Without doubt mon- 
sieur was rich, and in that case he might make a canal-boat 
as pretty as a xiiln—joli comme u?i chateau. And with 
that they invited me on board their own water villa. They 



a:N^ INLAXD YOyAGE. 51 

apologized for their cabin; they had not been rich enough 
to make it as it ought to be. 

•' The fire should have been here, at this side/' explained 
the husband. " Then one might have a writing-table in 
the middle — books — and'' (comprehensively) *' all. It 
would be quite coquettish — ga serait tout-a-fait coquet.'* 
And he looked about him as though the improvements were 
already made. It was plainly not the first time that he 
had thus beautified his cabin in imagination; and when 
next he makes a hit, I should expect to see the writing- 
table in the middle. 

Madame had three birds in a cage. They were no great 
thing, she explained. Fine birds were so dear. They had 
sought to get a HoUandis last winter in Rouen (Rouen, 
thought I; and is this whole mansion, with its dogs, and 
birds, and smoking chimneys, so far a traveler as that, and 
as homely an object among the cliffs and orchards Of the 
Seine as on the green plains of Sambre?) — they had sought 
to get a Hollandis last winter in Rouen; but these cost fif- 
teen francs apiece — picture it — fifteen francs! 

^^ Pour tm tout petit oiseait — For quite a little bird, '^ 
added the husband. 

As I continued to admire the apologetics died away, and 
the good people began to brag of their barge and their 
happy condition in life, as if they had been Emperor and 
Empress of the Indies. It was, in the Scotch phrase, a 
good hearing, and put me in good -humor with the world. 
If people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear a 
man boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really has, I 
believe they would do it more freely and with a better 
grace. 

They began to ask about our voyage. You should have 
seen how they sympathized. They seemed half ready to 
give up their barge and follow us. But these canaletti are 
only gypsies semi-domesticated. The semi-domestication 
came out in rather a pretty form. Suddenly madame's 



.')-2 AN INLAXD yOYAGE. 

brow darkened. '' Cepeiulcmi ,^^ she began, and then 
stopped; and then began again by asking me if . I were sin- 
gle. 

'* Yes/' said I. 

** And your friend who went by just now?'' 

He also was unmarried. 

Oh. then, all was well. She could not have wives left 
alone at home; but since there were no wives in the ques- 
tion, we were doing the best we could. 

'• To see about one in the world/' said the husband, *' il 
n'y a que ca — there is nothing else worth Avhile. A man, 
look you, who sticks in his own village like a bear,'' he 
went on, '' very well, he sees nothing. And then death is 
the end of all. And he has seen nothing." 

Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who 
had come up this canal in a steamer. 

*' Perhaps Mr. Moens in the ' Ytene,' " I suggested. 

'' That's it," assented the husband. '' He had his wife 
and family with him, and servants. He came ashore at 
all the locks and asked the name of the villages, whether 
from boatmen or lock-keepers; and then he wrote, wrote 
them down. Oh, he wrote enormously! I suppose it was 
a wager." 

A wager was a common enough explanation for our own 
exploits, but it seemed an original reason for taking notes. 



THE OISE IK FLOOD. 

Before nine next mornnig the two canoes were installed 
on a light country cart at Etreux; and we were soon fol- 
io whig them along the side of a pleasant valley full of 
hop-gardens and poplars. Agreeable villages lay here and 
there on the slope of the hill: notably, TujDigny, with the 
hop-poles hanging their garlands in the very street, and the 
houses clustered with grajjes. There was a fahit enthu- 



AN IXLAXD VOYAGE. 53 

siasm on our passage; weavers put their heads to the win- 
dows; children cried out in ecstasy at 'sight of the two 
^'boaties^^ — harquettes ; and bloused pedestrians, who 
were acquainted with our charioteer, jested with him on 
the nature of his freight. 

We had a shower or two, but light and flying. The air 
was clean and sweet among all these green fields and green 
things growing. There was not a touch of autumn in the 
weather. And when, at Vadencourt, we launched from 
a little lawn opposite the mill, the sun broke forth and set 
all the leaves shiidng in the valley of the Oise. 

The river was swollen with the long rains. From Vaden- 
court all the way to Origny it ran with ever quickening 
speed, taking fresh heart at each mile, and racing as though 
it already smelled the sea. The water was yellow and tur- 
bulent, swung with an angry eddy among half-sub merged 
willows, and made an angry clatter along stony shores. 
The course kept turning and turning in a narrow and well- 
timbered valley. Now the river would approach the side, 
and run gliding along the chalky base of the hill, and show 
us a few ojDen colza fields among the trees. Now it would 
skirt the garden-walls of houses, where we might catch a 
glimpse through a door- way, and see a priest pacing in the 
checkered sunlight. Again, the foliage closed so thickly in 
front that there seemed to be no issue; only a liiicivet of 
willows overtop23ed by elms and poplars, under which the 
river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past 
like a piece of the blue sky. On these different manifesta- 
tions the sun poured its clear and catholic looks. The 
shadows lay as solid on the swift surface of the stream as 
on the stable meadows. The light sparkled golden in the 
dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills into com^ 
n I union with our eyes. And all the while the river never 
stopped running or took breath; and the reeds along the 
whole valley stood shivering from top to toe. 

There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it 



:0t) foundeii on the shivering of the reeds. There are not 
.nany things in nature more striking to man's eve. It is 
such au eloquent pantomime of terror; and to see such a 
number of terrified creatures taking sanctuary in every 
nix>k along the shore is enough to infect a silly human witli 
alarm. Perhaps they are only a-cold., and no wonder, 
-tanding waist deep in the stream. Or, perhaps, they have 
.ever got accustomed to the speed and fury of the river's 
dux. or the miracle of its continuous body. Pan once 
plaved u}x>n their forefathers: and so, by the hands of his 
river, he still plays upon these later generations down all 
he valley of the Oise: and plays the same air., both sweet 
.<iid shrill, r^-* '^'' 'i- ' ■ ■- l»eauty and th- r^rr'-^v '^-f r]^^ 
vorid. 

The canc»e wiis like a leaf in the current. It took ii up 
and shook it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Cen- 
aur carrying off a nymph. To keep some command on 
iir direction required hard and diligent plying of the pad- 
Vie. The river was in such a hurry for the seal Every 
irop of water ran in a panic, like so many people iu a 
rightened crowd. But what crowd was ever so numerous 
r so single-minded P All the objects of sight went by at a 
dance measure: the eye^ght raced with the racing river; 
cies of every moment kept the pegs screwed so 
our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument, 
and the blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted through 
all the highways and by-ways of the veins and arteries, and 
in and out of the heart, as if circulation were but a holiday 
v>urney and not the daily moil of three-score years and ten. 
I'he reeds might nod their heads in warning, and with 
lemulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was 
strong and oold, and how death lurked in the eddy under- 
neath the willows. But the reeds had to stand where they 
ere: and those who stand still are always timid advisers. 
\ s for us. we could have shouted aloud. If this lively and 
beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death's contrivanc^e. 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 55 

the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with 
us. I was living three to the minute. I was scoring points 
against him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the 
stream. I have rarely had better profit of my life. 

For I think we may look upon our little private war with 
death somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will 
sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a 
bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his ex- 
travagances as so much gained upon the thieves. And 
above all, where, instead of simply spending, he makes a 
profitable investment for some of his money, when it will 
be out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living, and 
above all when it is healthful, is just so much gained upon 
the wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our 
pockets, the more in our stomachs, when he cries. Stand 
and deliver. A swift stream is a favorite artifice of his, 
and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum; 
but when he and I come to settle our accounts I shall 
whistle in his face for these hours upon the uj^per Oise. 

Toward afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sun- 
shine and the exhilaration of the pace. We could no longer 
contain ourselves and our content. The canoes were too 
small for us; we must be out and stretch ourselves on 
shore. And so in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs 
on the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco, and proclaimed 
the world excellent. It was the last good hour of the day, 
and I dwell upon it with extreme complacency. 

On one side of the valley, high upon the chalky summit 
of the hill, a plowman with his team appeared and disap- 
peared at regular intervals. At each revelation he stood 
still for a few seconds against the sky, for all the world (as 
the '* Cigarette'' declared) like a toy Burns who had just 
jilowed up the " Mountain Daisy.'' He was the only living 
thing within view, unless we are to count the river. 

On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a 
belfry showed among the foliage. Thence some inspired 



56 AIT INLAND VOYAGE. 

bell-ringer made the afternoon musical on a chime of bells. 
There was something very sweet and taking in the air he 
played, and we thought we had never heard bells speak so 
intelligibly or sing so melodiously as these. It must have 
been to some such measure that the spinners and the young 
maids sung, " Come away. Death, ^^ in the Shakespearean 
*'Illyria. '^ There is so often a threatening note, some- 
thing blatant and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I be- 
lieve we have fully more pain than pleasure from hearing 
them; but these, as they sounded abroad, now high, now 
low, now with a plaintive cadence that caught the ear like 
the burden of a po23ular song, were always moderate and 
tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still, rustic 
places, like the noise of a water-fall or the babble of a rook- 
ery in spring. I could have asked the bell-ringer for his 
blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so 
gently to tlie time of his meditations. I could have blessed 
the priest or the heritors, or whoever may be concerned 
with such affairs in France, who had left these sweet old 
bells to gladden the afternoon, and not held meetings, and 
made collections, and had their names rej^eatedly printed 
hi the local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, 
Birmingham-hearted substitutes, who should bombard their 
sides to the lorovocation of a brand-new bell-ringer, and fill 
the echoes of the valley with terror and riot. 

At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun 
withdrew. The piece was at an end; shadow and silence 
possessed the valley of the Oise. We took to the padale 
with glad hearts, like people who have sat out a noble per- 
formance and return to work. The river was more danger- 
ous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more sudden and 
violent. All the way down we had had our fill of diffi- 
culties. Sometimes it was a wear which could be shot, 
sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must 
withdraw the boats from the water and carry them round. 
But the chief sort of obstacle was a consequence of the late 



AJs" INLAND VOYAGE. 57 

high wirxds. Every two or three hundred yards a tree had 
fallen across the river^ and usually involved more than an- 
other in its fall. Often there was free water at the end, 
and we could steer round the leafy promontory and hear 
the water sucking and bubbling among the twigs. Often, 
again, when the tree reached from bank to bank, there was 
room, by lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe 
and all. Sometimes it was necessary to get out upon the 
trunk itself and pull the boats across; and sometimes, 
where the stream was too impetuous for this, there was 
nothing for it but to land and " carry over.^' This made 
a fine series of accidents in the day^s career, and kept us 
aware of ourselves. 

Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by 
a long way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in 
honor of the sun, the swift jiace, and the church bells, the 
river made one of its leonine pounces round a corner, and 
I was aware of another fallen tree within a stone-cast. I 
had my back-board down in a trice, and aimed for a place 
where the trunk seemed high enough above the water, and 
the branches not too thick to let me slip below. When a 
man has just vowed eternal brotherhood with the universe 
he is not in a temper to take great determinations coolly, 
and this, which might have been a very important determi- 
nation for me, had not been taken under a happy star. 
The tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet 
struggling to make less of myself and get through, the 
river took the matter out of my hands and bereaved me of 
my boat. The ' ' Arethusa ^ ' swung round broadside on, 
leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained on 
board, and, thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, 
righted, and went merrily away down stream. 

I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to 
the tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer 
than I cared about. My thoughts were of a grave and al- 
most somber character, but I still clung to my paddle. The 



58 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could pull up 
my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the 
water of the Oise in my trousers' pockets. You can never 
know, till you try it, what a dead jjuU a river makes 
against a man. Death himself had me by the heels, for 
this was his last ambuscade, and he must now join person- 
ally in the fray. And still I held to my paddle. At last I 
dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay 
there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humor and 
injustice. A poor figure I must have presented to Burns 
upon the hill -top with his team. But there was the paddle 
in my hand. On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to 
get these words inscribed: " He clung to his paddle. ■'' 

The '' Cigarette '' had gone past awhile before; for, as I 
might have observed, if I had been a little less pleased with 
the universe at the moment, there was a clear way round 
the tree-top at the further side. He had offered his services 
to haul me out, but, as I was then already on my elbows, I 
had declined, and sent him down stream after the truant 
"Arethusa.^^ The stream was too rapid for a man to 
mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands. So 
I crawled along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down 
the meadows by the river-side. I was so cold that my heart 
was sore. I had now an idea of my own why the reeds so 
bitterly shivered. I could have given any of them a lesson. 
The " Cigarette " remarked, facetiously, that he thought I 
was " taking exercise '' as I drew near, until he made out 
for certain that I was only twittering with cold. I had a 
rub-down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the 
india-rubber bag. But I was not my own man again for 
the rest of the voyage. I had a queasy sense that I wore 
my last dry clothes upon my body. The struggle had tired 
me; and, perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I was a little 
dashed in spirit. The devouring element in the universe 
had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened 
by a running stream. The bells were ail very pretty iu 



AN Ils^LAIs^D VOYAGE. 59 

their way, but I had heard some of the hollow notes of 
Pail's music. Would the wicked river drag me down by 
the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the timer 
Nature's good-humor was only skin-deep, after all. 

There was still a long way to go by the winding course 
of the stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was 
ringing in Origny Sainte-Benoite when we arrived. 



ORIGNY SATNTE-BENOITE. 

A BY-DAY. 

The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had lit- 
tle rest; indeed, I do not think I remember anywhere else 
so great a choice of services as were here offered to the de- 
vout. And while the bells made merr}^ in the sunshine, all 
the world with his dog was out shooting among the beets 
and colza. 

In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the 
street at a foot-pace, singing to a very slow, lamentable 
music, " France, mes amours. " It brought everybody 
to the door; and when our landlady called in the man to 
buy the words, he had not a copy of them left. She was 
not the first nor the second who had been taken with the 
song. There is something very j^athetic in the love of the 
French people, since the war, for dismal patriotic music- 
making. I have watched a forester from Alsace while some 
one was singing '' Les malheurs de la France,'' at a bap- 
tismal party in the neighborhood of Fontainebleau. He 
arouse from the table and took his son aside, close by where 
I was standing. " Listen, listen," he said, bearing on the 
boy's shoulder, "and remember this, my son. "" A little 
after he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could 
hear him sobbing in the darkness. 

The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and 



60 AN^ INLAND VOYAGE. 

Lorraine made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensi- 
tive people; and their hearts are still hot, not so much 
against Germany as against the Empire. In what other 
country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world 
into the street? But affliction heightens love; and we shall 
never know we are Englishmen until we have lost India. 
Indej^endent America is still the cross of my existence; I 
can not think of Farmer George without abhorrence; and I 
never feel more warmly to my own land than when I see 
the stars and stripes, and remember what our empire might 
have been. 

The hawker^s little book, which I purchased, was a 
curious mixture. Side by side with the flip2:)ant, rowdy 
nonsense of the Paris music-halls, there were many pas- 
toral pieces, not without a touch of poetry, I thought, and 
instinct with the brave independence of the poorer class in 
France. There you might read how the wood-cutter gloried 
in his ax, and the gardener scorned to be ashamed of his 
spade. It was not very well written, this poetry of labor, 
but the pluck of the sentiment redeemeil what was weak 
or wordy in the expression. The martial and the patriotic 
pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, womanish jDrodnc- 
tions one and all. The poet had passed under the Caudine 
Forks; he sung for an army visiting the tomb of its old re- 
nown, with arms reversed; and sung not of victory, but of 
death. There was a number in the hawker^s collection 
called " Oonscrits Fran^ais,'' which may rank among the 
most dissuasive war-lyrics on record. It would not be pos- 
sible to fight at all in such a spirit. The bravest conscript 
would turn pale if such a ditty were struck up beside him 
on the morning of battle; and whole regiments would pile 
their arms to its tune. 

If Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about the influence 
of national songs, you would say France was come to a poor 
pass. But the thing will work its own cure, and a sound- 
hearted and courageous people weary at length of sniveling 



AN IKLAis^D YOTAGE. 61 

over their disasters. x\lready Paul Deroulede has written 
some manly military verses. There is not much of the 
trumpet note in them^, perhaps, to stir a man's heart in his 
bosom; they lack the lyrical elation, and move slowly; but 
they are written in a grave, honorable, stoical spirit, which 
should carry soldiers far in a good cause. One feels as if 
one would like to trust Deroulede with something. It will 
be happy if he can so far inoculate his fellow-countrymen 
that they may be trusted with their own future. And, in 
the meantime, here is an antedote to " French Conscripts '* 
and much other doleful versification. 

We had left the boats over night in the custody of one 
whom we shall call Carnival. I did not 23roperly catch his 
name, and perhaps that was not unfortunate for him, as I 
am not in a position to hand him down with honor to pos- 
terity. To this person's premises we strolled in the course- 
of the day, and found quite a little deputation iusecting the 
canoes. There was a stout gentleman with a knowledge of 
the river, which he seemed eager to impart. There was a 
very elegant young gentleman in a black coat, with a 
smattering of English, who led the talk at once to the Ox- 
ford and Cambridge boat-race. And then there were three 
handsome girls from fifteen to twenty; and an old gentle- 
man in a blouse, with no teeth to speak of, and a strong 
country accent. Quite the pick of Origny, I should suppose. 

The '*' Cigarette '' had some mysteries to perform with his 
rigging in the coach-house; so I was left to do the parade 
single-handed. I found myself very much of a hero whether 
I would or not. The girls were full of little shudderings 
over the dangers of our journey. And I thought it world 
be ungallant not to take my cue from the ladies. My mis- 
hap of yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced a deep 
sensation. It was '^ Othello " over again, with no less than 
three " Desdemonas " and a sprinkling of sympathetic sen- 
ators in the background. !N'ever were the canoes more 
flattered, or flattered more adroitly. 



62 AX INLAND VOYAGE. 

'* It is like a violin/^ cried one of the girls in an 
ecstasy. 

*'I thank you for the word, mademoiselle/^ said I. 
*' All the more since there are people who call out to me 
that it is like a coffin/' 

" Oh I but it is really like a violin. It is finished like a 
violin/' she went on. 

'* And polished like a violin/'' added a senator. 

*' One has only to stretch the cords/' concluded an- 
other, ''and then tum-tumty-tum;" he imitated the result 
with spirit. 

AVas not this a graceful little ovation? AVhere this peo- 
ple finds the secret of its pretty speeches I can not imagine, 
unless the secret should be no other than a sincere desire to 
please. But then no disgrace is attached in France to say- 
ing a thing neatly; whereas, in England, to talk like a 
book is to give in one's resignation to society. 

The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach- 
house, and somewhat irrelevantly informed the " Cigarette " 
that he was the father of the three girls and four more; 
quite an exploit for a Frenchman. 

"You are very fortunate," answered the "Cigarette," 
politely. 

And the old gentleman, having apparently gained liis 
point, stole awa}- again. 

AVe all got very friendly together. The girls proposed to 
start with us on the morrow, if you please. And, jesting 
apart, every one was anxious to know the hour of our de- 
parture. Now, when you are going to crawl into your 
canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, however friendly, is 
undesirable, and so we told them not before twelve, and 
mentally determined to be off by ten at latest. 

Toward evening we went abroad asfain to post some let- 
ters. It was cool and pleasant; the long village was quite 
empty, except for one or two urchins who followed us as 
thi-v miiJ^lit have followed a menagerie; the hills and the 



AX IXLAXD VOYAGE. 63 

tree- tops looked in from all sides through the clear air,, and 
the bells were chiming for yet another service. 

Suddenly we sighted the three girls^ standing, with a 
fourth sister, in front of a shop on the wide selvage of the 
roadway. "SVe had been very merry with them a little while 
ago, to be sure. But what was the etiquette of Origny? 
Had it been a country road, of course we should have 
spoken to them; but here, under the eyes of all the gossips, 
ought we to do even as much as bow? I consulted the 
" Cigarette. ^^ 

" Look," said he. 

I looked. There were the four girls on the same spot; 
but now four backs were turned to us, very upright and 
conscious. Corporal Modesty had given the word of com- 
mand, and the well-disciplined j^icket had gone right-about- 
face like a single person. They maintained this formation 
all the while we were in sight; but we heard them tittering 
among themselves, and the girl whom we had not met 
laughed with open mouth, and even looked over her shoul- 
der at the enem3\ I wonder was it altogether modesty after 
all, or in part a sort of country provocation ? 

As we were returning to the inn we beheld something 
floating in the ample field of golden evening sky, above the 
chalk clilfs and the trees that grow along their summit. It 
was too high up, too large, and too steady for a kite: and, 
as it was dark, it could not be a star. For, although a 
star were as black as ink and as rugged as a walnut, so 
amply does the sun bathe heaven with radiance that it 
would sparkle like a point of light for us. The village was 
dotted with people with their heads in air; and tlie children 
were in a bustle all along the street and far up the straight 
road that climbs the hill, where we could still see them 
running in loose knots. It was a balloon, we learned, 
which had left Saint Quentin at half past five that evening. 
Mighty composedly the majority of the grown people took 
it. But we were English, and were soon running up the 



-^ . - ----- ^--^- ■.-.;- iTfaTfckrt aUriiL. 

Tbf- Fn&PEac^ vas oTer br libe tzme "wt g rarni^ liie tap -: : 

ni ol the sky. *au 

i_i ^. _-._err I &bk niTaeLf: 

eanriii up irco the seTt^uth lifaToi? or <MjmB BaMv i- » 
1- " - :_-~l'ere in tha~ blue.. mieTen distt whScii 

: -. - : :. _ V i.- aijfped and melted Itefore onr t i ^ _ : jbablj 
zht Esmiuam ^'ere- alreaSr vanning tbemselTffi at & fsxm 

, 5idt xrt«et and 

. - r'lwniiied arriisfteis, retumiiis: i^irpugrh the meadovi. 

." .t. li 

:_ieiiD 

"w^ venu iriiii a "fTan biooh, the oodor of a melon, swinging 

" ~ " — - f. TaJieT, and the ~ " :5s behind 

the nre oi Lhe cL 

Tsit iampf wer- and tihe salads were hang 

:i Orignj Sainie-j^_--.r jt the rrrer. 



0EIG5T-SAINTE-BE5:0ITE. 

caupjorr at TAiiix. 



Aiasorf?H ve c*ame iate for dinner tbe eomjanj at tabk 
gpiiriil '* Tiiat is L.-w we are in 

_ -^- one. ■ __ ho m down wIiL Hfr are our 

'riendE.*' A-nn the rest applandBd- 
" Three aJtceether. and az. odd tno i : - ..^t :n^ 

Two of fliem 'wert giiest^ like flurselreg- both men of tL-: 



''ho thonEhi nottirn^ bo onaiL. not eren a lark er a wam- 

i"r. but he migL: Tincao-a:* hiE proT- '• - '^' ': • 



A 2s iXLAXJj NuVALtE. '<0 

Por such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like 
Samson's, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to 
boast of these infinitesimal exj)loits, produced a feeling of 
disprop"ortion in the world, as when a steam-hammer is set 
to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, subdued person, 
l)lond, and lymphatic, and sad, with something the look of 
a Dane: " Tristes fetes de Danois !'' as Gaston Lafenestre 
used to say. 

I must not let that name go by without a word for the 
best of all good fellows, now gone down into the dust. We 
shall never again see Gaston in his forest costume — he was 
Gaston with all the world, in affection, not in disrespect — 
nor hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau with the 
woodland liorn. Never again shall his kind smile put 
peace among all races of artistic men, and make the En- 
glishman at home in France, !N^ever more shall the sheep, 
who were not more innocent at heart than he, sit all uncon- 
sciously for his industrious pencil. He died too early, at the 
very moment when he was beginning to j)ut forth fresh 
sprouts and blossom into something worthy of himself; and 
yet none who knew him will think lie lived in vain. I 
never knew a man so httle, for whom yet I had so much 
affection ; and I find it a good test of others, how much 
they had learned to understand and value him. His was, 
indeed, a good influence in life while he was still among 
us; he had a fresh laugh; it did you good to see him; and, 
however sad he may have been at heart, he always bore a 
bold and cheerful countenance and took fortune's worst as 
it were the shc<\rers of spring. But now his mother sits 
alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he gather- 
ed mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth. 

Many of his pictures found their way across the channel; 
besides those which were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee 
left him alone in London with two English pence, and, 
perhaps, twice as many words of English. If any one who 
reads these lines should have a scene of sheep, in the man- 



(JO AJN' IKLA^l) YUYAtxE. 

iier of Jacques, with this fine creature ^s signature, let him 
tell himself that one of the kindest and bravest of men has 
lent a hand to decorate his lodging. There may be better 
pictures in the National Gallery; but not a painter among 
the generations had a better heart. Precious in the sight 
of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the death 
of his saints. It had need to be precious; for it is very 
costly, when, by a stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the 
peace-maker and peace-looker of a whole society is laid in 
the ground with Caesar and the Twelve Apostles. 

There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontaine- 
bleau; and when the dessert comes in at Barbizon, people 
look to the door for a figure that is gone. 

The third of our companions at Origny was no less a 
2:)erson than the landlady's husband; not properly the land- 
lord, since he worked himself in a factory during the day, 
and came to his own house at evening as a guest; a man 
worn to skin and bone by perpetual excitement, with bald- 
ish head, sharp features, and swift, shining eyes. On 
Saturday, describing some paltry adventure at a duck-hunt, 
he broke a plate into a score of fragments. Whenever he 
make a remark he would look all round the table with his 
chin raised and a spark of green light in either eye, seeking 
approval. His wife appeared now and again in the door- 
way of the room, where she was superintending dinner, 
with a "Henri, you forget yourself," or a ''Henri, you 
can surely talk without making such a noise.'*' Indeed, 
that was what the honest fellow could not do. On the 
most trifling matter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the 
table, and his voice rolled abroad in changeful thunder. I 
never saw such a 2:)t'tard of a man; I think the devil was in 
him. He had two favorite expressions, " It is logical, '^ or 
illogical, as the case might be; and this other thrown out 
with a certain bravado, as a man might unfurl a banner, 
at the beginning of maiiy a long and sonorous story; ** I 
am a proletarian, you see. " Indeed, we saw it very welL 



AN" INLAND VOYAGE. 67 

■God forbid that ever I should find him handling a gun in 
Paris streets. That will not be a good moment for the 
general public. 

I thought his two phrases very much re^Dresented the 
good and evil of his class, and, to some extent, of his coun- 
tr}^ It is a strong thing to say what one is, and not be 
a,shamed of it; even although it be in doubtful taste to re- 
peat the statement too often in one evening. I should not 
admire ifc in a duke, of course; but as times go the trait is 
honorable in a workman. On the other hand, it is not at 
all a strong thing to put one's reliance upon logic; and our 
own logic particularly, for it is gene'rally wrong. We never 
know where we are to end if once we begin following words 
or doctors. There is an upright stock in a man's own 
heart that is trustier than any syllogism; and the eyes, and 
the sympathies, and appetites know a thing or two that 
have never yet been stated in controversy. Reasons are as 
plentiful as blackberries; and, like fisticuffs, they serve 
impartially with all sides. Doctrines do not stand or fall 
by their proofs, and are only logical in so far as they are 
cleverly put. An able controversialist no more than an 
able general demonstrates the justice of his cause But 
France is all gone wandering after one or two big words; 
it will take some time before they can be satisfied that they 
are no more than words, however big; and, when once that 
is done, they will perhaps find logic less diverting. 

The conversation opened with details of the day's shoot- 
ing. When all the sportsmen of a village shoot over the 
village territory pro indiviso, it is plain that many questions 
of etiquette and priority must arise. 

*' Here now," cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, 
'^ here is a field of beet-root. Well. Here am I, then. I 
advance, do I not? " Eh Men ! sacristi, " and the state- 
ment, waxing louder, rolls off into a reverberation of 
oaths, the speaker glaring about for sympathy, and every- 
body nodding his head to him in the name of peace. 



68 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

The ruddy Northman told some tales of his own prowess 
in keeping order; notably one of a marquis. 

^' Marquis/ "* I said, "if you take another step I fire 
upon you. You have committed a dirtiness, marquis. ^^ 

Whereupon, it appeared, the marquis touched his cap 
and withdrew. 

The landlord applauded noisily. " It was well done,'^ he 
said. ** He did all that he could. He admitted he was 
wrong. '^ And then oath upon oath. He was no marquis- 
lover, either, but he had a sense of justice in him, this 
proletarian host of ours. 

From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a gen- 
eral comparison of Paris and the country. The proletarian 
beat the table like a drum in praise of Paris. '■ What is 
Paris? Paris is the cream of France. There are no Pari- 
sians; it is you, and I, and everybody who are Parisians. 
A man has eighty chances per cent., to get on in the world 
in Paris. ' ^ And he drew a vivid sketch of the workman 
in a den no bigger than a dog-hutch, making articles that 
were to go all over the world. " B7i Men, qiioi, c'est mag^ 
7iifiqitey Qct!" cried he. 

The sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant ^s 
life; he thought Paris bad for men and women. " Cen- 
tralization,^^ said he — 

But the landlord was at his throat in a moment. It was 
all logical, he showed him, and all magnificent. " What 
a spectacle! What a glance for an eye!^' And the dishes 
reeled upon the table under a cannonade of blows. 

Seeking to make peace I threw in a word in praise of the 
liberty of opicion in France. I could hardly have shot 
more amiss. There was an instant silence and a great 
wagging of significant heads. They did not fancy the sub- 
ject, it was plain, but they gave me to understand that the 
sad Northman was a martyr on account of his views. 
** Ask him a bit,^ ' said they. " J ust ask him. '^ 

'* Yes, sir," said he in his quiet way, answering me, al- 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 69 

though I had not spoken, ^* I am afraid there is less liberty 
of opinion in France than you may imagine. " And with 
that he dropped his eyes and seemed to consider the subject 
at an end. Our curiosity \yas mightily excited at this. 
How, or why, or when was this lymphatic bagman mar- 
tyred? We concluded at once it was on some religious 
question, and brushed up our memories of the Inquisition, 
which were principally drawn from Poe's horrid story, and 
the sermon in " Tristram Shandy,^' I believe. 

On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further 
into the question; for when we rose very early to avoid a 
sympathizing deputation at our departure, we found the 
hero up before us. He was breaking his fast on white 
wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the character of 
martyr, I conclude. We had a long conversation, and 
made out what we wanted in spite of his reserve. But 
here was a truly curious circumstance. It seems possible 
for two Scotchmen and a Frenchman to discuss during a 
long half hour, and each nationality have a different idea 
in view throughout. It was not till the very end that we 
discovered his heresy had been political, or that he sus- 
pected our mistake. The terms and spirit in which he 
spoke of his political beliefs were, in our eyes, suited to 
religious beliefs. And vice versa, 

Nothing could be more characteristic of the two coun- 
tries. Politics are the religion of France; as Nancy Ewart 

would have said, '* A d d bad religion/' while we, at 

home, keep most of our bitterness for all differences about 
a hymn-book or a Hebrew word which, i^erhaps, neither of 
the parties can translate. And perhaps the misconception 
is typical of many others that may never be cleared up; not 
only between people of different race, but between those of 
different sex. 

As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a Communist, or 
perhaps only a Communard, which is a very different thing, 
and had lost one or more situations in consequence. I think 



70 AK^ INLAND VOYAGE. 

he had also been rejected m marriage; but perhaps he had 
a sentimental way of considering business which deceived 
me. He was a mild, gentle creature, an}^ way, and I hope 
he has got a better situation and married a more suitable 
wife since then. 



DOWN THE OISE. 

TO MOY. 

Carnival notoriously cheated us at first. Finding us 
easy in our ways, he regretted having let us off so cheaply, 
and, taking me aside, told me a cock-and-bull story, with 
the moral of another five francs for the narrator. The 
thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once 
dropjDcd all friendliness of manner and kept him in his 
place as an inferior, with freezing British dignity. He 
saw in a moment that he had gone too far and killed a will- 
ing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded 
if he could only have thought of a decent pretext. He 
wished me to drink with him, but I would none of his 
drinivs. He grew pathetically tender in his jDrofessions, but 
I walked beside him in silence or answered him m stately 
courtesies, and, when we got to the landing-place, passed 
the word in English slang to the " Cigarette. ^^ 

In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day 
before, there must have been fifty people about the bridge. 
AVe were as pleasant as we could be with all but Carnival. 
We said good-bye, shaking hands with the old gentleman 
who knew the river and the young gentleman who had a 
smattering of English, but never a word for Carnival. 
Poor Carnival, here was a humiliation. He who had been 
so much identified with the canoes, who had given orders 
in our name, who liad shown off tlie boats and even the 



AX IXLAXD VOYAGE. 71 

boatmen like a private exhibition of his own, to be now so 
pubhcly shamed by the lions of his caravan I I never saw 
anybody look more crest-fallen than he. He hung in the 
background, coming timidly forward ever and again as he 
thought he saw some symptom of a relenting humor, and 
falling hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare. 
Let us hope it will be a lesson to him. 

I would not have mentioned Carnivars peccadillo had 
not the thing been so uncommon in France. This, for in- 
stance, was the only case of dishonesty or even sharj? prac- 
tice in our whole voyage. We talk very much about our 
honesty in England. It is a good rule to be on your guard 
wherever you hear great professions about a very little i^iece 
of virtue. If the English could only hear how. they are 
spoken of abroad, they might conline themselves for awhile 
to remedying the fact, and perhaps even when that was 
done, give us fewer of their airs. 

The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present 
at our start, but when we got round to the second bridge, 
behold, it was black with sight-seers! We were loudly 
cheered, and for a good way below young lads and lasses 
ran along the bank, still cheering. What with current and 
paddling, we were flashing along like swallows. It was no 
joke to keep up with us upon the woody shore. But the 
girls picked up their skirts, as if they were sure they had 
good ankles, and followed until their breath was out. The 
last to weary were the three graces and a couple of com- 
panions; and just as they, too, had had enough, the fore- 
most of the three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed her 
hand to the canoeists. Not Diana herself, although this 
was more of a Venus, after all, could have done a graceful 
thing more gracefully. " Come back again I^' she cried; 
and all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny 
repeated the words, *' Come back.-*^ But the river had us 
round an angle in a twinkling, and we were alone with the 
green trees and running water. 



7 '4 AN IXLAKD A'OYAGE. 

Come back? There is no coming back, young ladies, on 
the impetuous stream of life. 

" The merchajit bows unto the seaman's star, 
The plowman from the sun his season takes," 

And we must all set our pocket watches by the clock of 
fate. There is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away 
man with his fancies like straw, and runs fast in time and 
space. It is full of curves like this, your wmding river of 
the Oise; and lingers andreturns in pleasant pastorals; and 
yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all. For though 
it should revisit the same acre of meadow in the same hour; 
it will have made an ample sweep between whiles; many 
little streams will have fallen in; many exhalations risen 
toward the sun; and even although it were the same acre, 
it will not be the same river Oise. And thus, oh graces of 
Origny, although the wandering fortune of my life should 
carry me back again to where you await death ''s whistle by 
the river, that will not be the old I who walks the streets; 
and those wives and mothers, say, will those be you? 

There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter 
of fact. In these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious 
hurry for the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, through all 
the windings of its channel, that I strained my thumb fight- 
ing with the rapids, and had to paddle all the rest of the 
way with one hand turned wp. Sometimes it had to serve 
mills; and being still a little river, ran very dry and shal- 
low in the meanwhile. We had to put our legs out of the 
boat, and shove ourselves off the sand of the bottom with 
our feet. And still it went on its way singing among the 
poplars, and making a green valley in the world. After a 
good woman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is noth- 
ing so agreeable on earth as a river. I forgave it its at- 
tempt on my life; which was, after all, one part owing to 
the unruly winds of heaven that had blown do^Yn the tree, 
one part to my own mismanagement, and only a third part 



AX INLAND VOYAGE. 7.J 

to the river itself, and that not out of maUce, but from its 
great preoccupation over its own business of getting to the 
sea. A difficult business, too; for the detours it had to 
make are not to be counted. The geograj^hers seem to 
have given up the attempt; for I found no map represent 
the infinite contortion of its course. A fact will say more 
than any of them. After we had been some hours, three, 
if I mistake not, flitting by the trees at this smooth, break- 
neck gallop, when we came upon a hamlet and asked where 
we were, we had got no further than four kilometers (say 
two miles and a half) from Origny. If it were not for the 
honor of the thing (in the Scotch saying), we might almost 
as well have been standing still. 

We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of 23op- 
lars. The leaves danced and prattled in the wind all round 
about us. The river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to 
chide at our delay. Little we cared. The river knew 
where it was going; not so we; the less our hurry, where 
we found good quarters, and a pleasant theater for a pipe. 
At that hour stock-brokers were shouting in Paris Bourse 
for two or three per cent. ; but we minded them as little as 
the sliding stream, and sacrificed a hecatomb of minutes 
to the gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry is the re- 
source of the faithless. Where a man can trust his own 
heart, and those of his friends, to-morrow is as good as to- 
day. And if he die in the meanwhile, why, then, there he 
dies, and the question is solved. 

We had to take to the canal in the course of the after- 
noon; because where it crossed the river there was, not a 
bridge, but a siphon. If it had not been for an excited fel- 
low on the bank w^e should have paddled right into the 
siphon, and thenceforward not paddled any more. We met 
a man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who was much in- 
terested in our cruise. And I was witness to a strange seiz- 
ure of lying suffered by the '^ Cigarette;'' who, because his 
Jinife came from Norway, narrated all sorts of adventures 



74 AN INLAXD VOYAGE. 

in that country, where he has never been. He was quite 
feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal possession. 

Moy (pronounced Moy) was a j^leasant little village, 
gathered round a chateau in a moat. The air was per- 
fumed with hemp from neighboring fields. At the Golden 
Sheej) we found excellent entertainment. German shells 
from the siege of La Fere, ]S"uremberg figures, gold-fish in 
a bowl, and all manner of knickknacks, embellished the 
public room. The landlady was a stout, plain, short- 
sighted, motherly body, with something not far short of a 
genius for cookery. She had a guess of her excellence her- 
self. After every dish was sent in, she would come and 
look on at the dinner for awhile, with puckered, blinking 
eyes. '^ G'est Ion, oi*est-ce ixisf^ she would say; and, 
when she had received a proper answer, she disapi^eared 
into the kitchen. That common French dish, partridge 
and cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes at the Golden 
^Bheep; and many subsequent dinners have bitterly disap- 
pointed me in consequence. Sweet was our rest in the 
Golden Sheep at Moy. 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY. 

We lingered in Moy a good j)art of the day, for we were 
fond of being philosophical, and scorned long journeys and 
early starts on i^riiiciple. The place, moreover, invited to 
rei^ose. People in elaborate shooting costumes sallied from 
the chateau with guns and game-bags; and this was a 
jjleasure in itself, to remain behind while these elegant 
pleasure-seekers took the first of the morning. In this 'way 
all the world may be an aristocrat, and play the duke 
among marquises, and the reigning monarch among dukes, 
if he vnll only outvie them in tranquillity. An imperturb- 
able demeanor comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds 
pan not be jieri^lexed or frightened, but go on iu fortune 



AX INLAND VOYAGE. <0 

or misfortune at their own 23rivate pace, like a clock during 
a thunder-storm. 

We made a very short day of it to La Fere; but the dusk 
was falling and a small rain had begun before we atowed 
the boats. La Fere is a fortified town in a j^lain, and has 
two belts of rampart. Between the first and the second 
extends a region of waste land and cultivated patches. 
Here and there along the way-side were posters forbidding 
trespass in the name of military engineering. At last a 
second gate- way admitted us to the town itself. Lighted 
windows looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cookery 
came abroad upon the air. The town was full of the mili- 
tary reserve, out for the French autumn maneuvers, and 
the reservists walked speedily and wore their formidable 
great-coats. It was a fine night to be within doors over 
dinner, and hear the rain upon the windows. 

The *' Cigarette " and I could not sufficiently congratulate 
each other on the prospect, for we had been told there was 
a capital inn at La Fere. Such a dinner as we were going 
to eat I such beds as we were to sleep in! and all the wliile 
the rain raining on houseless folk over all the poplared 
country-side. It made our mouths water. The inn bore 
the name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, 
I forget which. But I shall never forget how spacious and 
how eminently habitable it looked as we drew near. The 
carriage entry was lighted up, not by hitention, but from 
the mere superfluity of fire and candle in the house. A 
rattle of many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great 
field of table-cloth; the kitchen glowed hke a forge and 
smelled like a garden of things to eat. 

Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of a 
hostelry, with all its furnaces in action and all its dressers 
charged with viands, you are now to suppose us making our 
triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each 
with a limp India-rubber bag upon his arm. I do not be- 
lieve I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it through 



rr; _ AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

I sort of glory, but it seemed to me'^crowded with the 
mowy cai^s of cookmen, who all turned round from their 
saucepans and looked at us with surprise. There was no 
loubt about the landlady, however; there she was, heading 
ler arm}', a flushed, angry woman, full of . affairs. Her I 
isked, politel}' — tooi^olitely, thinks the " Cigarette"— if we 
30uld have beds, she surveying us coldly fi'om head to foot. 

" You will find beds in the suburb,^^ she remarked. 
'' We are too busy for the like of you.'^ 

If Ave could make an entrance, change our, clothes, 
md order a bottle of wine, I felt sure we could j^ut things 
L'ight; so said I, "If we can not sleej), we may at least 
line ' ' — and was for dei^ositing my bag. 

What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which fol- 
io wed in the lancljady's face! She made a run at us and 
stamped her foot. 

*' Out with you — out of the door!^' she screeched. 
'' Sortez ! sortez ! sortez imr la i^orte .'" 

I do not know how it happened, but next moment we 
ivere out in the rain and darkness, and I was cursing be- 
fore the carriage entry like a disa23pointed mendicant. 
^Vhere were the boating-men of Belgium? where the judge 
md his good wines? and where the graces of Origny? 
Black, black was the night after the fire-lighted kitchen, 
L)ut what was that to the blackness in our heart? This was 

II ot the first time that I have been refused a lodging. Often 
md often have I j^lanned what I should do if such a mis- 
adventure hap2)ened to me again. And nothing is easier 
to 2>lan. But to put in execution, with the heart boiling at 
bhe indignity? Try it; try it only once, and tell me what 
^'Ou did. 

It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. 
Six hours of police surveillance (such as I have had) or one 
brutal rejection from an inn door change your views upon 
bhe subject like a course of lectures. As long as you keep 
in the upper regions, with all the world bowing to you as 



AK INLAND VOYAGE. 77 

you go, social arrangements have a very handsome air; but 
once get under the wheels and you wish society were at the 
devil. I will give most respectable men a fortnight of such a 
life, and then I will offer them twopence for what remains 
of their morality. 

For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or the 
Hind, or whatever it was, I would have set the tem^^le of 
Diana on fire if it had been handy. There was no crime 
complete enough to express my disapproval of human in- 
stitutions. As for the *' Cigarette,'^ I never knew a man so 
altered. *' We have been taken for peddlers again," said 
he. " Good God, what it must be to be a j^eddler in real- 
ity!^' He particularized a complaint for every joint in the 
landlady's body. Timon was a philanthropist alongside of 
him. And then, when he was at the top of his maledictory 
bent, he would suddenly break away and begin whimper- 
ingly to commiserate the poor. " I hope to God," he said 
— and I trust the prayer was answered — " that I shall never 
he uncivil to a peddler. '^ "Was this the imperturbable 
'' Cigarette?" Tliis, this was he. Oh, change beyond re- 
port, thought, or belief! 

Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the 
windows grew brighter as the night increased in darkness. 
We trudged in and out of La Fere streets; we saw shops, 
and private houses where peoj^le were copiously dining; we 
saw stables where carters' nags had plenty of fodder and 
olean straw; we saw no end of reservists, who were very 
sorry for themselves this wet night, I doubt not, and 
yearned for their country homes; but had they not each 
man his place in La Fere barracks? And we, what had we: 

There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town. 
People gave us directions, which we followed as best we 
oould, generally with the effect of bringing us out again 
upon the scene of our disgrace. We were very sad peojjie 
indeed, by the time we had gone all over La Fere; and the 
*' Cigarette '^ had already mnde up his mind to lie under a 



78 Al^r IKLAI^D VOYAGE. 

poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. But right at the other 
end, the house next the town gate was full of light and 
bustle. ^^ Bazin, aiihergiste, loge a pied/' ^n2l^ the sign. 
" A la Croix de Mcdte.'' There were we received. 

The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smok- 
ing; and were very glad indeed when the drums and bugles 
began to go about the streets, and one and all had to 
snatch shakoes and be off for the barracks. 

Bazin was a tall man, running to fat; soft-spoken, with 
a delicate, gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; 
but he excused himself, having pledged reservists all day 
long. This was a very different type of the workman-inn- 
keeper from the bawling, disputatious fellow at Origny. 
He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative 
painter in his youth. There were such opportunities for 
self-instruction there, he said. And if any one has read 
Zola^s description of the workman's marriage party visiting 
the Louvre they would do well to have heard Bazin by way 
of antidote. He had delighted in the museums in his 
youth. *' One sees there little miracles of work,'' he said; 
** that is what makes a good workman; it kindles a spark." 
We asked him how he managed in La Fere. " I am mar-'' 
ried," he said, *^and I have my pretty children. But 
frankly, it is no life at all. From morning to night I 
pledge a j^ack of good-enough fellows who know nothing.'^ 
It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of 
the clouds. We sat in front of the door, talking softly 
with Bazin. At the guard-house opposite the guard was 
being forever turned out, as trains of field artillery kept 
clanking in out of the night or patrols of horsemen trotted 
by in their cloaks. Mme. Bazin came out after awhile; 
she was tired with her day's work, I suppose; and she 
nestled up to her husband and laid her head upon his^ 
breast. He had his arm about her and kept gently patting 
her on the shoulder. I think Bazin was right, and he was 
really married. Of how few j^eople can the same be said! 



AK IJTLAXD VOYAGE. 79 

Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. 
We were charged for candles, for food and drink, and for 
the beds we slept in. But there was nothing in the bill 
for the husband's pleasant talk; nor for the pretty spectacle 
of their married life. And there was yet another item un- 
charged. For these people's politeness really set us uj) 
again in our own esteem. We had a thirst for considera- 
tion; the sense of insult was still hot in our spirits; and 
civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in the 
world. * 

How little we pay our way in life! Although we have 
our purses continually in our hand, the better j)art of 
service goes still unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a 
grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins 
knew how much I liked them? perhaps they, also, were 
healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them in 
my manner? 



DOWN THE OISE. 

THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY. 

Below La Fere the river runs through a piece of ojien 
pastoral country; green, opulent, loved by breeders; called 
the Golden Valley. Li wide sweeps, and with a swift and 
equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of water visits and 
makes green the fields. Kine, and horses, and httle hu- 
morous donkeys browse together in the meadows, and come 
down in troops to the river-side to drink. They make a 
strange feature in the landscape; above all when startled, 
and you see them galloping to and fro, with their incon- 
gruous forms and faces. It gives a feeling as of great, un- 
fenced pamj^as, and the herds of wandering nations. 
There were hills in the distance upon either hand; and on 
one side, the river sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs 
of Coucy and St. Gobain. 

The artillery were practicing at La Fere; and soon the 



>0 AK INLAND VOYAGE. 

cannon of heaven joined in that loud play. Two continents 
of cloud met and exchanged salvos overheiid; while all 
round the liorizon we could see sunshine and clear air upon 
the hills. What with the guns and the thunder, the herds 
were all frightened in the Golden Valley. We could see 
them tossing their heads, and running to and fro in timor- 
ous indecision; and when they had made up their minds, 
and the donkey followed the horse, and the cow was after 
the donkey, we could hear their hoofs thundering abroad 
over the meadows. It had a martial sound, like cavalry 
charges. And altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, 
we had a very rousing battle piece performed for our 
amusement. 

At last, the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun 
shone on the wet meadows; the air was scented with the 
breath of rejoicing trees and grass; and the river kept un- 
weariedly carrying us on at its best pace. There was a 
manufacturing district about Chauny; and after that the 
banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent country, 
and we could see nothing but clay sides, and one willow 
after another. Only here and there we passed by a village 
or a ferry, and some wondering child upon the bank would 
stare after us until we turned the corner. I dare say we 
continued to paddle in that child's dreams for many a. 
night after. 

Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making 
the hours longer by their variety. When the showers were 
heavy I could feel each drop striking through my jersey to 
my warm skin; and the accumulation of small shocks put 
me nearly beside myself. I decided I should buy a mack- 
intosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get wet; but the misery 
of these individual pricks of cold all over my body at the 
same instant of time made me flail the water with my pad- 
dle like a madman. The *' Cigarette" was greatly amused 
by these eb i ill i lions. It gave him something else to look at 
besides clay banks and willows. 



Ai^r INLAND VOYAGE. 81 

All the time the river stole away like a thief iu straight 
places, or swung rouod corners with an eddy; the willows 
nodded and were undermined all day long; the clay banks 
tumbled in; the Oise, which had been so many centuries 
making the Golden Valley, seemed to have changed its 
fancy and be bent upon undoing its performance. What 
a number of things a river does by simply following Gravity 
in the innocence of its heart ! 



NOYOX CATHEDRAL. 

KoYOK stands about a mile from the river, in a little 
plain surrounded by wooded liills, and entirely covers an 
eminence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, 
straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers. As we got 
into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble up-hill one 
upon another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their 
scrambling they did not attain above the knees of the 
cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, over all. As 
the streets drew near to this presiding genius, through the 
market-place under the Hotel de Ville, they grew emptier 
and more composed. Blank walls and shuttered windows 
were turned to the great edifice, and grass grew on the 
white causeway. *'' Put off thy shoes from off thy feet,, 
for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. " The 
Hotel du Nord, nevertheless, lights its secular tapers witliin 
a stone-cast of the church; and we had the suj^erb east end 
before our eyes all morning from the v>'indow of our bed- 
room. I have seldom looked on the east end of a church 
with more complete sympathy. x\s it flanges out in three 
wide terraces, and settles down broadly on the eartli, it 
looks like the poop of some great old battle-ship. Hollow- 
backed buttresses carry vasos, which figure for the stern 
lanterns. There is a roll in the ground, and the towers 
just appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good 



S2 AX IXLAXD VOYAGE. 

ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any 
moment it might be a hundred feet away from you, climb- 
ing the next billow. At any moment a window might 
open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat and 
proceed to take an observation. The old admirals sail the 
sea no longer; the old shi^os of battle are all broken up^ 
and live only in pictures; but this, that was a church be- 
fore ever they were thought upon, is still a church, and 
makes as brave an aj^pearance by the Oise. The cathedral 
and the river are probably the two oldest things for miles 
around; and certainly they have both a grand old age. 

The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, 
and showed us the five bells hanging in their loft. From 
above the town was a tessellated pavement of roofs and 
gardens; the old line of rampart was plainly traceable; and 
the Sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, in a 
bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the towers of 
Chateau Coucy. 

I find I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite 
kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily 
inspired as when it made a cathedral: a thing as single and 
specious as a statue- to the first glance, and yet, on exami- 
nation, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. The 
height of spires can not be taken by trigonometry; they 
measure absurdly short, but how tall they are to the ad- 
miring eye! And where we have so many elegant propor- 
tions, growing one out of the other, and all together into 
one, it seems as if joroportion transcended itself and be- 
came something different and more imposing. I could 
never fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach 
in a cathedral. What is he to say that will not be an anti- 
climax? For though I have heard a considerable variety 
of sermons, I never yet heard one that was so expressive 
as a cathedral. ^Tis the best preacher itself, and preaches 
day and night; not only telling you of man's art and 
aspirations in the past, but convicting your own soul of 



AK INLAisD VOYAGE. 83 

ardent sympathies; or rather, hke all good preachers, it 
sets you preaching to yourself — and every man is his own 
doctor of divinity in the last resort. 

As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the after- 
noon, the sweet, groaning thunder of the organ floated out 
of the church like a summons. I was not averse, liking 
the theater so well, to sit out an act or two of the play, but 
I could never rightly make out the nature of the service I 
beheld. Four or five priests and as many choristers were 
singing ** Miserere ^' before the high altar when I went in. 
There was no congregation but a few old women on chairs 
and old men kneeling on the pavement. After a while a 
long train of young girls, walking two and two, each with 
a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in black with a 
white veil, came from behind the altar and began to de- 
scend the nave; the four first carrying a Virgin and child 
upon a table. The priests and choristers arose from their 
knees and followed after, singing " Ave Mary " as they 
went. In this order they made the circuit of the cathedral, 
passing twice before me where I leaned against a pillar. 
The priest who seemed of most consequence was a strange 
down-looking old man. He kept mumbling prayers with 
his lips; but, as he looked upon me darkling, it did not 
seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart. Two 
others, who bore the burden of the chant, were stout, 
brutal, military-looking men of forty, with bold, over-fed 
eyes; they sung with some lustiness, and trolled forth 
'* Ave Mary '' like a garrison catch. The little girls were 
timid and grave. As they footed slowly up the aisle, each 
one took a moment's glance at the Englishman; and the 
big nun who played marshal fairly stared him out of coun- 
tenance. As for the choristers, from first to last they 
misbehaved as only boys can misbehave, and cruelly marred 
the performance with their antics. 

I understood a great deal of the spirit of wJiat went on. 
Indeed, it would be diflicult not to understand the 



ti-L AK INLAND VOYAGE. 

*' Miserere/' which I take to be the composition of an 
atheist. If it ever be a good thing to take sucli desi^ond- 
ency to heart, the " Miserere '' is the right music and a 
cathedral a fit scene. So far I am at one with the 
Catholics — an odd name for them, after all? But why, in 
God's name, these holiday choristers? why these priests 
who steal wandering looks about the congregation while 
they feign to be at prayer? why this fat nun, who rudely 
arranges her procession and shakes delinquent virgins by 
the elbow? why this spitting, and snuffing, and forgetting 
of keys, and the thousand and one little misadventures that 
disturb a frame of mind, laboriously edified with chants 
and organings? In any j^lay-house reverend fathers may 
see what can be done with a little art, and how, to move 
high sentiments, it is necessary to drill the supernumeraries 
and have every stool in its 23roper place. 

One other circumstance distressed »me. I could be a 
' ' Miserere '' myself, having had a good deal of open-air 
exercise of late; but I wished the old people somewhere 
else. It was neither the right sort of music nor the right 
sort of divinity for men and women who have come through 
most accidents by this time, and probably have an opinion 
of their own upon the tragic element in life. A person up 
in years can generally do his own *' Miserere '' for himself; 
although I notice that such an one often prefers " Jubilate 
Deo " for his ordinary singing. On the whole, the most 
religious exercise for the aged is probably to recall their 
own experience; so many friends dead, so many hopes dis- 
appointed, so many slips and stumbles, and withal so many 
bright daj^s and smiling providences; there is surely the 
matter of a very eloquent sermon in all this. 

On the whole, I was greatly solemnized. In the little 
pictorial map of our whole ''Inland Voyage,'' which my 
fancy still preserves, and sometimes unrolls for the amuse- 
ment of odd moments, Noyon Cathedral figures on a most 
pre2:)Osterous scale, and mast be nearly as large as a de- 



AX INLAND VOYAGE. 85 

partment. I can still see the faces of the priests as if they 
were at my elbow^ and hear ^' Ave Maria, ora pro nobis '^ 
sounding through the church. All Noyon is blotted out 
for me by these superior memories; and I do not care to 
say more about the place. It was but a stack of brown 
roofs at the best, where I believe people live very reputably 
in a quiet way; but the shadow of the church falls upon it 
when the sun is low, and the five bells are heard in all 
quarters, telling that the organ has begun. If ever I join 
the Church of Rome I shall stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon 
on the Oise. 



DOWK THE OISE. 

TO COMPIEGN^E. 

The most patient people grow weary at last with being 
continually wetted with rain; except, of course in the 
Scotch Highlands, where there are not enough fine inter- 
vals to point the difference. That was like to be our case 
the day we left Noyon. I remember nothing of the voy- 
age; it was nothing but clay banks, and willows, and rain; 
incessant, pitiless, beating rain; until we stopped to lunch 
at a little inn at Pimprez, where the canal ran very near 
the river. We were so sadly drenched that the landlady lit 
a few sticks in the chimney for our comfort; there we sat 
in a stream of vapor lamenting our concerns. The hus- 
band donned a game-bag and strode out to shoot; the wife 
sat in a far corner watching us. I think we were worth 
looking at. We grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere; 
we forecast other La Feres in the future— ^although things 
went better with the " Cigarette ''' for spokesman; he had 
more aplomb altogether than I; and a dull, positive way of 
approaching a landlady that carried off the india-rubber 
bags. Talking of La Fere put us talking of the reservists. 



86 AN li^LAND VOYAGE. 

"Reservery/^ said he, "^ seems a jDretty mean way to 
spend one's autumn holiday/' 

*' About as mean/' returned I, dejectedly, " as canoe- 
ing." 

" These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?" asked the 
landlady, with unconscious irony. 

It was too much. The scales fell from our eyes. Another 
wet day, it was determined, and we put the boats into the 
train. The weather took the hint. That was our last 
wetting. The afternoon faired up; grand clouds still voy- 
aged in the sky, but now singly, and with a depth of blue 
around their path; and a sunset, in the daintiest rose and 
gold, inaugurated a thick night of stars and a month of 
unbroken weather. At the same time, the river began to 
give us a better outlook into the country. The banks were 
not so high, the willows disappeared from along the mar- 
gin, and pleasant hills stood all along its course and marked 
their profile on the sky. 

In a little while the canal coming to its last lock, began 
to discharge its water-houses on the Oise; so that we had 
no lack of company to fear. Here were all our own friends; 
the Deo Gratias Oonde and the Four Sons of Aymon jour- 
neyed cheerily down the stream along with us; we ex- 
changed water side pleasantries with the steersman perched 
among the lumber, or the driver hoarse with bawling to 
his horses; and the children came and looked over the side 
as we paddled by. We had never known all this while how 
much we missed them; but it gave us a filUp to see the 
smoke from their chimneys. 

A little below this junction we made another meeting of 
yet more account. For there we were joined by the Aisne, 
already a far-traveled river and fresh out of Champagne. 
Here ended the adolescence of the Oise; this was his mar- 
riage day; thenceforward he had a stately, brimming 
march, conscious of his own dignity and sundry dams. He 
became a tranquil feature in the scene. The trees and 



AX INLAND VOYAGE. 87 

towny saw themselves in him, as in a mirror. He carried 
the canoes lightly on his broad breast; there was no need 
to work hard against an eddy, but idleness became the 
order of the day, and mere straightforward dipping of the 
paddle, now on this side, now on that, without intelligence 
or effort. Truly we were coming into halcyon weather 
upon all acccounts, and were floated toward the sea like 
gentlemen. 

We made Compiegne as the sun was going down; a fine 
I^rofile of a town above the river. .Over the bridge a regi- 
ment was parading to the drum. People loitered on the 
quay, some fishing, some looking idly at the stream. And 
as the two boats shot in along the water, we could see them 
pointing them out and S23eaking one to another. We landed 
at a floating lavatory, where the washerwomen were still 
beating the clothes. 



AT COMPIEGNE. 

We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiegne, where 
nobody observed our presence. 

Reservery and general militarismus (as the Germans call 
it) was rampant. A camp of conical white tents without 
the town looked like a leaf out of a picture Bible; sword- 
belts decorated the walls of the cafes, and the streets kept 
sounding all day long with military music. It was not pos- 
sible to be an Englishman and avoid a feeling of elation; 
for the men who followed the drums were small and walked 
shabbily. Each man inclined at his own angle, and jolted 
to his own convenience as he went. There was nothing of 
the superb gait with which a regiment of tall Highlanders 
moves behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a 
natural phenomenon. Who, that has seen it, can forget 
the drum-major pacing in front, the drummers' tiger-skins, 
the pipers' swinging plaids, the strange, elastic rhythm of 



88 AN" INLAND VOYAGE. 

the whole regiment footing it in time, and the bangiof the 
drum when the brasses cease, and the shrill ^jipes take up 
the martial story in their place? 

A girl at school in France began to describe one of our 
regiments on parade to her French school-mates, and as 
she went on she told me the recollection grew so vivid, she 
became so proud to be the countrywoman of such soldiers, 
and so sorry to be in another countrj^ that her voice failed 
her and she burst into tears. I have never forgotten that 
girl, and I think she- very nearly deserves a statue. To 
call her a young lady, with all its niminy associations^, 
would be to offer her an insult. She may rest assured of 
one thing, although she never should marry a heroic gen- 
eral, never see any great or immediate result of her life, 
she will not have lived in vain for her native land. 

But though French soldiers show to ill-advantage on 
parade, on the march they are gay, alert, and willing, like 
a troop of fox-hunters. I remember once seeing a com- 
pany pass through the forest of Fontainebleau, on the 
Chailly road, between the Bas Breau and the Eeine Blanche. 
One fellow walked a little before the rest, and sung a loud, 
audacious marching song. The rest bestirred their feet, 
and even swung their muskets in time. A young officer 
on horseback had hard ado to keep his countenance at the 
words. You never saw anything so cheerful and spontane- 
ous as their gait; school-boys do not look more eagerly at 
hare and hounds; and you would have thought it impossi- 
ble to tire such willing marchers. 

My great delight in Compiegne was the town hall. I 
doted upon the town hall. It is a monument of Gothic 
insecurity, all turreted, and gargoyled, and slashed, and 
bedizened with half a score of architectural fancies. Some 
of the niches are gilt and painted; and in a great square 
panel in the center, in black relief on a gilt ground, Louis 
XII. rides upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip, and 
head thrown back. There is royal arrogance in every line 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 89 

of him; the stiiTU23pecl foot j^rojects insolently from the 
frame; the eye is hard and proud; the very horse seems to 
be treading with gratification over prostrate serfs^ and to 
have the breath of the trumpet in his nostrils. So rides 
forever, on the front of the town hall, the good king Louis 
XII., the father of his people. 

Over the king^s head, in the tall center turret, appears 
the dial of a clock; and high above that, three little me- 
chanical figures, each one with a hammer in his hand, 
whose business it is to chime out the hours, and halves, and 
quarters for the burgesses of Compiegne. The center 
figure has a gilt brast-plate: the two others wear gilt 
trunk-hose; and they all three have elegant, flapping hats 
like cavaliers. As the quarter ap^Droaches they turn their 
heads and look knowingly one to the other; and tlien, 
kling go the three hammers on three little bells below. 
The hour follows, deep and sonorous, from the interior of 
the tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest from their labors 
with contentment. 

I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their maneu- 
vers, and took good care to miss as few performances as 
jjossible; and I found that even the ** Cigarette, ^^ while he 
l^retended to despise my enthusiasm, was more or less a 
devotee himself. There is something highly absurd in the 
exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter on a 
housetop. They would be more in keeping in a glass case 
before a iNiirnberg clock. Above all, at night, when the 
children are abed, and even grown people are snoring 
under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these 
gingerbread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and 
the rolling moon? The gargoyles may fitly enough t^vist 
their ape-like heads; fitly enough may the potentate be- 
stride his charger, like a centurion in an old German j^rint 
of the " Via Dolorosa;'^ but the toys should be put away 
in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the 
children are abroad again to be amused. 



OU AN IXLAIsD VOYAGE. 

Ill Compiegne post-office a great packet of letters await- 
ed us; and the authorities were, for this occasiou only, so 
polite as to hand them over upon application. 

In some way our journey may be said to end with this 
letter-bag at Compiegne. The sjDell was broken. We had 
partly come home from that moment. 

No one should have any correspondence on a journey: it 
is bad enough to have to write; but the receipt of letters is 
the death of all holiday feeling. 

" Out of my country and myself I go."" I wish to take 
a dive among new conditions for a while, as into another 
element. I have nothing to do with my friends or my^ 
affections for the time; when I came away I left my heart 
at home in a desk, or sent it forward with portmanteau to 
await me at my destination. After my journey is over I 
shall not fail to read your admirable letters with the atten- 
tion they deserve. But I have paid all this money, look 
you, and paddled all these strokes, for no other purpose 
than to be abroad ; and yet you keep me at home with your 
joerpetual communications. You tug the string, and I feel 
that I am a tethered bird. You pursue me all over Europe 
with the little vexations that I came away to avoid. 'There 
is no discharge in the war of life, I am well aware; but 
shall there not be so much as a week^s furlough: 

We were up by six, the day we were to leave. They had 
taken so little note of us that I hardly thought they would 
have condescended on a bill. But they did, with some 
smart particulars, too; and we paid in a civilized manner 
to an uninterested clerk, and went out of that hotel, with 
the india-rubber bags, unremarked. No one cared to know 
about us. It is not possible to rise before a vilhige; but 
Compiegne was so grown a town that it took its ease in the 
morning; and we were up and away while it was still in 
dressing-gown and slippers. The streets were left to peo- 
ple washing door-steps; nobody was in full dress but the 
cavaliers upon the town hall; they were all washed with 



AN IX LAND VOYAGE. 91 

dew J spruce in their gilding, and full of intelligence and a 
sense of professional responsibility. Kling went they on 
the bells for the half past six, as we went by. I took it 
kind of them to make me this parting compliment; they 
never were in better form, not even at noon ujDon a Sun- 
day. 

There was no one to see us off but the early washer- 
women — early and late — who were already beating the 
linen in their floating lavatory on the river. They were 
very merry and matutinal in their ways; plunged their 
arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel the shock. It would 
be dispiriting to me, this early beginning and fiirst cold 
dabble, of a most dispiriting day's work. But I believe 
they would have been as unwilling to change days with us 
as we could be to change with them. They crowded'to the 
door to watch us paddle away into the thin sunny mists 
upon the river; and shouted heartily after us till we were 
through the bridge. 



CHANGED TIMES. 

Theee is a sense in which those mists never rose from off 
our journey; and from that time forth they lie very dense- 
ly in my note-book. As long as the Oise was a small, rural 
river it took us near by people's doors, and we could hold 
a conversation with natives in the riparian fields. But now 
that it had grown so wide, the life along shore passed us by 
at a distance. It was the same difference as between a 
great public highway and a country by-path that wanders 
in and out of cottage gardens. We now lay in towns, 
where nobody troubled us with questions; we had floated 
into civilized life, where people pass without salutation. 
In sparsely inhabited places we make all we can of each 
encounter; but when it comes to a city we kee]^ to our- 
selves, and never speak unless we have trodden on a man's 
toes. In these waters we were no longer strange birds. 



92 A^" INLAJs^D VOYAGE. 

and nobody supposed we had traveled further than from 
the last town. I remember, Avhen we came into L^Isle 
Adam, for instance, how we met dozens of pleasure-boats 
outing it for the afternoon, and there was nothing to dis- 
tinguish the true voyager from the amateur, except, per- 
haps, the filthy condition of my sail. The company in one 
boat actually thought they recognized me for a neighbor. 
Was there ever anything more wounding? All the romance 
had come down to that. Now, on the upper Oise, wliere 
nothing sailed, as a general thing, but fish, a pair of canoe- 
ists could not be thus vulgarly explained away; we w^ere 
strange and j^icturesque intruders; and out of people's 
wonder sprung a sort of light and j)assing intimacy all 
along our route. There is nothing but tit for tat in this 
world, though sometimes it be a little difficult to trace; for 
the scores are older than we ourselves, and there has never 
yet been a settling day since things were. You get enter- 
tainment pretty much in proportion as you give. As long^ 
as we were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared at and fol- 
lowed like a quack doctor or a caravan, we had no want of 
amusement in return; but as soon as we sunk into common- 
place ourselves, all whom we met were similarly disen- 
chanted. And here is one reason of a dozen why the 
world is dull to dull persons. 

In our earlier adventures there was generally something 
to do, and that quickened us. Even the showers of rain 
had a revivifying effect, and shook up the brain from tor- 
por. But now, when the river no longer ran in a proper 
sense, only glided seaward with an even, outright, but im- 
perceptible speed, and when the sky smiled upon us day 
after day without variety, we began to slip into that golden 
doze of mind which follows upon much exercise in the open 
air. I have stu23efied myself in this way more than oneei 
indeed I dearly love the feeling; but I never had it to the 
same degree as when paddling down the Oise. It was the 
apotheosis of stupidity. 



AJs" INLAND yOYAGE. 93 

^Ye ceased reading entirety. Sometimes, when. I fomid 
a new joaper, I took a particular 23leasiire in reading a single 
number of the current novel ; but I never could bear more 
than three installments; and even the second was a disap- 
23ointment. As soon as the tale became in any way per> 
spicuous, it lost all merit in my eyes; only a single scene. 
or, as is the way with these feuilletons, half a scene, with- 
out antecedent ur consequence, hke a piece of a dream, 
had the knack of fixing my interest. The less I saw of the 
novel the better I liked it; a pregnant reflection. But for 
the most part, as I said, we neither of us read anything in 
the world, and employed the very little while we were 
awake between bed and dinner in poring upon maps. I 
have always been fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas 
with the greatest enjoyment. The names of places are 
singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers is in- 
thralling to the eye; and to hit in a map upon some place 
you have heard of before makes history a new possession. 
But we thumbed our charts, on those evenings, with the 
blankest unconcern. We cared not a fraction for this place 
or that. We stared at the sheet as children listen to their 
rattle, and read the names of towns or villages to forget 
them again at once. We had no romance in the matter; 
there was nobody so fancy-free. If you had taken the maps 
away while we were studying them most intently, it is a 
fair bet whether we might not have continued to study the 
table with the same delight. 

About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that 
was eating. I think I made a god of my belly. I remem- 
ber dwelling in imagination upon this or that dish till my 
mouth watered; and long before we got in for the night my 
appetite was a clamant, instant annoyance. Sometimes we 
paddled alongside for awhile and whetted each other with 
gastronomical fancies as we went. Cake and sherry, a 
homely refection, but not within reach upon the Oise, trot- 
ted through my head for many a mile; and once, as we 



94 a:n" iis^laxd voyage. 

were apj^roachmg Verherie, the '* Cigarette '^ brought my 
heart into my mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties 
and Sauterne. 

I suppose none of us recognize the great part that is 
played in hfe by eating and drinking. The appetite is so 
imperious that we can stomach the least interesting viands, 
and pass off a dinner hour thankfully enough on bread and 
water; just as there are men who must read something, if 
it were only " Bradshaw's Guide. ^' But there is a romance 
about the matter, after all. Probably the table has more 
devotees than love; and I am sure that food is much more 
generally entertaining than scenery. Do you give in, as 
Walt Whitman would say, that you are any the less im- 
mortal for that? The true materialism is to be ashamed 
of what we are. To detect the flavor of an olive is no less 
a i^iece of human j^erfection than to find beauty in the 
colors of the sunset. 

Canoeing was easy work. To dip the paddle at the proper 
inclination, now right, now left; to keep the head down 
stream; to empty the little pool that gathered in the lap of 
the aj^ron; to screw up the eyes against the glittering 
sparkles of sun upon the water; or now and again to pass 
below the whistling tow-rope of the '' Deo Gratias '' of 
Oondo or " Four Sons of Aymon ^^ — there was not much 
art in that; certainly silly muscles managed it between 
sleep and waking; and meanwhile the brain had a whole 
holiday, and went to sleep. We took in at a glance the 
larger features of the scene, and beheld, with half an eye, 
bloused fishers and dabbling washer-women on the bank. 
Now and again we might be half wakened by some church 
spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass that 
clung about the paddle and had to be plucked off and 
thrown away. But these luminous intervals were only 
partially luminous. A little more of us was called into 
action, but never the whole. The central bureau of nerves, 
what in some moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday 



AX INLAND VOYAGE. 95 

without disturbance, like a government office. The great 
wheels of intelligence turned idly in the head, like fly- 
wheels, grinding no grist. I have gone on for half an hour 
at a time, counting my strokes and forgetting the hundreds. 
I flatter myself the beasts that perish could not underbid 
that, as a low form of consciousness. And what a pleasure 
it was! What a hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about! 
There is nothing captious about a man who has attained to 
this, the one 230ssible apotheosis in life, the Apotheosis of 
Stu|)idity; and he begins to feel dignified and longevous 
like a tree. 

There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which 
accomiDanied what I may call the depth, if I must not call 
it the intensity, of my abstraction. What philosophers call 
me and not me, ego and non ego, preoccupied me whether I 
would or no. There was less me and more not me than I 
was accustomed to expect. I looked on upon somebod}' 
else, who managed the paddling; I was aware of somebody 
else's feet against the stretcher; my own body seemed to 
have no more intimate lelation to me than the canoe, or 
the river, or the river-banks. Nor this alone: something 
inside my mind, a part of my brain, a province of my 
proper being, had thrown off allegiance and set uj) for it- 
self, or perhaps for the somebody else who did the ^^ad- 
dling. I had dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner 
of myself. I was isolated in my own skull. Thoughts 
presented themselves imbidden; they were not my thoughts,, 
they were plainly some one else's; and I considered them 
like a part of the landscape. I take it, in short, that I was 
about as near Nirvana as would be convenient in practical 
life; and, if tlils be so, I make the Buddhists my sincere 
compliments; 'cis an agreeg-ble state, not very consistent 
with mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in a money 
point of view, but very calm, golden, and incurioas, and 
one that sets a man superior to alarms. It may be best 
figured by supposing yourself to get dead drunk, and yet 



'JU AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

keep sober to enjoy it. I have a notion tha-t open-air la- 
borers must spend a large portion of their days in this ec- 
static stupor, which explains their high composure and en- 
durance. A pity to go to the expense of laudanum when 
here is a better paradise for nothing! 

This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, 
take it all in all. It was the furthest piece of travel accom- 
plished. Indeed, it lies so far from beaten paths of lan- 
guage that I despair of getting the reader into sympathy 
with the smiling, comjolacent idiocy of my condition; when 
ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees 
and church spires along the bank surged up from time to 
time into my notice, like solid objects through a rolling 
cloud-land; when the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle 
in • the water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts 
asleep: when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes an 
intolerable eye-sore, and sometimes quite a companion for 
me, and the object of pleased consideration; and all the 
time, with the river running and the shores changing upon 
either hand, I kept counting my strokes and forgetting the 
hundreds, the happiest animal in France. 



DOWN THE OISE. 

CHURCH. INTEEIORS. 

We made our first stage below Compiegne to Pont Sainte 
Maxence. I was abroad a little after six the next morning. 
The air was biting and smelled of frost. In an open j^lace 
a score of women wrangled together over the day's market; 
and the noise of their negotiation sounded thin and quer- 
ulous, like that of sparrows on a winter's morning. The 
rare passengers blew into their hands, and shuffled in their 
wooden shoes to set the blood agog. The streets were full 



Alis" INLAIS-D VOYAGE. 97 

of icy shadow, although the chimneys were smoking over- 
head in golden sunshine. If you wake early enough at this 
season of the year, you may get uj) in December to break 
your fast in June. 

I found my way to the church, for there is always some- 
thing to see about a church, whether living worshipers or 
dead men's tombs; you find there the deadliest earnest, 
and the hollowest deceit; and even where it is not a piece 
of history, it will be certain to leak out some contemporary 
gossip. It was scarcely so cold m the church as it was 
without, but it looked colder. The wliite nave was posi- 
tively arctic to the eye; and the tawdriness of a continental 
altar looked more forlorn than usual in the solitude and the 
bleak air. Two priests sat in the chancel reading and wait- 
ing penitents; and out in the nave one very old woman was 
engaged in her devotions. It was a wonder how she was 
able to pass her beads when healthy young people were 
breathing in their palms and slapping their chest; but 
though this concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by the 
nature of her exercises. She went from chair to chair, 
from altar to altar, circumnavigating the church. To each 
shrine she dedicated an equal number of beads and an equal 
length of time. Like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat 
cynical view of the commercial prospect, she desired to 
place her supplications in a great variety of heavenly se- 
curities. She would risk notliing on the credit of any single 
intercessor. Out of the whole company of saints and angels, 
not one but was to suppose himself her champion elect 
against the Great Assizes! I could only think of it as a 
dull, transparent jugglery, based upon unconscious unbelief. 

She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more 
than bone and parchment, curiously put together. Her 
eyes, with which she interrogated mine, were vacant of 
sense. It depends on what you call seeing, whether you 
might not call her blind. Perhaps she had known love; 
perhaps borne children, suckled them, and given them pet 



98 Al^ INLAND VOYAGE. 

names. But now that was all gone by, and had left her 
neither happier nor wiser; and the best she could do with 
her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and 
juggle for a slice of heaven. It was not without a gulp that 
I escaped into the streets and the keen morning air. Morn- 
ing? why, how tired of it she would be before night! and if 
she did not sleep, how then? It is fortunate that not many 
of us are brought up publicly to justify our lives at the bar 
of three-score years and ten; fortunate that such a number 
are knocked oj)portunely on the head in what they call the 
flower of their years, and go away to suifer for their follies 
in private somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick chil- 
dren and discontented old folk, we might be put out of all 
C()nceit of life. 

I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day's 
paddle; the old devotee stuck in my throat sorely. But I 
was soon in the seventh heaven of stu23idity; and knew 
nothing but that somebody was paddling a canoe, while I 
was counting his strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I 
used sometimes to be afraid I should remember the hun- 
dreds; which would have made a toil of a pleasure; but the 
terror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by en- 
chantment, and I knew no more than the man in the moon 
about my only occupation. 

At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes 
in anothei- floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, 
was packed with washer-women, red-handed and loud- 
voiced; and they and their broad jokes are about all I re- 
member of the place. I could look up my history books, if 
you were very anxious, and tell you a date or two; for it 
figured rather largely in the English wars. But I prefer to 
mention a girls' boarding-school, which had an interest for 
us because it was a girls' boarding-school, and because we 
imagined we had rather an interest for it. At least, there 
were the girls about the garden; and' here were we on the 
river: and there was more than one handkerchief waved 



AN IXLAIs'D TOY AGE. 99 

as we went by. It caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet 
how we should have wearied and despised each other, these 
girls and I, if we had been introduced at a croquet-party! 
But this is a fashion I love: to kiss the hand or wave a 
handkerchief to i^eo^^le I shall never see again, to play with 
possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to hang upon. It 
gives the traveler a jog, reminds him that he is not a trav- 
eler everywhere, and that liis journey is no more than a 
siesta by the way on the real march of life. 

The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, 
splashed wdth gaudy lights from the windows, and picked 
out with medallions of the Dolorous Way. But there was 
one oddity, in the way of an ex voto, which pleased me 
hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat, swung from the 
vault, with a written aspiration that God should conduct 
the " St. Nicholas '^ of Creil to a good haven. The thing 
w^as neatly executed, and would have made the delight of 
a party of boys on the water-side. But what tickled me 
was the gravity of the peril to be conjured. You might 
hang up the model of a sea-going ship, and welcome : one 
that is to 23h)W a furrow round the world, and visit the 
tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are well worth 
a candle and a mass. But the " Saint Nicholas '^ of Creil, 
which was to be tugged for some ten years by patient 
draught of horses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars chat- 
tering overhead, and the ski23per whistling at the tiller; 
which was to do all its errands in green, inland places, and 
never got out of sight of a village belfry in all its cruising: 
why, you would have thought if anything could be done 
without the intervention of Providence,. it would be that! 
But perhaps the skipper was a humorist; or perhaps a 
prophet, reminding people of the seriousness of life by this 
preposterous token. ' 

At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favorite 
saint on the score of punctuality. Day and hour can be 
specified; and grateful people do not fail to specify them 



lUO AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

oil a votive tablet, when prayers have been punctually and 
neatly answered. Whenever time is a consideration. Saint 
.Joseph is the proper intermediary. I took a sort of -plens- 
ure in observing the vogue he had in France, for the good 
man plays a very small part in my religion at home. Yet 
I could not help fearing that, where the saint is so much 
commended for exactitude; he will be expected to be very 
grateful for his tablet. 

This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great im- 
portance any way. Whether people's g-atitude for the good 
gifts that come to them be wisely conceived or dutifully ex- 
l^ressed is a secondary matter, after all, so long as they feel 
gratitude. The true ignorance is when a man does not 
know that he has received a good gift, or begins to imagine 
liat he has got it for himself. The self-made man is the 
j'unniest wind-bag after all! There is a 'marked difference 
between decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the gas in a 
metropolitan back parlor with a box of patent matches; 
and, do what we will, there is always something made to 
our htmd, if it were only our fingers. 

But there was something worse than foolishness placarded 
in Creil Church. The Association of the Living Rosary 
(of which I had never previously heard) is responsible for 
tliat. This association was founded, according to tlie print- 
ed advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory Sixteentli, on 
the 17th of January, 1832; according to a colored bass-re- 
lief, it seems to have been founded, some time or other, by 
the A'irgin giving one rosary to Saint Dominic, and the In- 
fant Saviour giving another to Saint Catherine of Sienna. 
Pope Gregory is not so imposing, but he is nearer hand. I 
v<nild not distinctly make out whether the association wag 
entirely devotional, or had an eye to good works; at least it 
is hidilv orsranized; the names of fourteen matrons and 
misses were filled in for each week of the month as associ- 
ates, with one other, generally a married woman, at the top 
of Zulatrice, the choragus of the band. Indulgences, plen- 



AN INLAI^D- VOYAGE. 101 

ary and partial, follow on the performance of the duties of 
the association. *' The partial indulgences are attached to 
the recitation of the rosary.'^ On '^ the recitation of the 
required dizaine/' a partial indulgence pronq^tly follows. 
When j)eople serve the kingdom of Heaven \^itli a pass- 
book in their hands, I should always be afraid lest they 
should carry the same commercial spirit into their dealings 
with their fellow-men, which would make a sad and sordid 
business of this life. 

There is one more article, however, of happier import. 
** All these indulgences,^' it ai:)peared, '' are applicable to 
souls in purgatory. '' For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, 
apply them all to the souls in jDurgatory without delay! 
Burns would take no hire for his last songs, preferring to 
serve his country out of unmixed love. Suppose you were 
to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls 
in purgatory were not greatly bettered, some souls in Creil 
upon the Oise would find themselves none the worse either 
here or hereafter. 

I can not help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, 
whether a Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to un- 
derstand these signs, and do them what justice they de- 
serve; and I can not help answering that he is not. They 
can not look so merely ugly and* mean to the faithful as 
they do to me. I see that as clearly as a proposition 
in Euclid. For these believers are neither weak nor 
wicked. They can put up their tablet commending Saint 
Joseph for his dispatch as if he were still a village carpen- 
ter; they can ** recite the required dizaine/' and meta- 
phorically pocket the indulgences as if they had done a job 
for Heaven; and then they can go out and look down un- 
abashed upon this wonderful river flowing by, and up with- 
out confusion at the pin-point stars, which are themselves 
great worlds full of flowing rivers greater than the Oise. I 
see it as plainly, I say, as a proposition m Euclid, that 
my Protestant mind has missed the point, and that there 



103 A]Sr INLA^s^D VOYAGE. 

^oes with these deformities some higher and more religious 
spirit than I dream. 

I wonder if other 2:)eople would make the same allow- 
ances for me? Like the ladies of Creil,- having recited my 
rosary of toleration, I look for my indulgence on the spot. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES. 

We made Precy about sundown. The. plain is rich with 
tufts of poplar. In a wide, luminous curve the Oise lay 
under the hill-side. A faint mist began to rise and con- 
found the different distances together. There was not a 
sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in some meadows 
by the river, and the creaking of a cart down the long road 
that descends the hill. The villas in their gardens, the 
sho})s along the street, all seemed to have been deserted 
the day before; and I felt inclined to walk discreetly as one 
feels in a silent forest. All of a sudden we came round a 
corner, and there, in a little green round the church, was 
a bevy of girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet. Their 
laughter and the hollow sound of ball and mallet made a 
cheery stir in the neighbovhood; and the look of these slim 
figures, all corseted and ribboned, produced an answerable 
disturbance in our hearts. We were within sniff of Paris, 
it seemed. And here were females of our own species 
playing croquet, just as if Precy had been a place in real 
life instead of a stage in the fairy-land of travel. For, to 
be frank, the peasant-woman is scarcely to be counted as a 
woman at all, and after having passed by such a succession 
of people in petticoats digging, and hoeing, and making 
dinner, this company of coquettes under arms made quite 
a surprising feature in the landscape, and convinced us at 
once of being fallible males. 

The inn at Precy is the worst inn in France. Not even 



AN I]S^LAis^D VOYAGE. lOS 

in Scotlancl have I found worse fare. It was kept by a 
brother and sister, neither of whom was out of their teens. 
The sister, so to speak, prepared a meal for us; and the 
brother, wlio had been tipphng, came in and brought with 
him a tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we eat. We found 
pieces of lake- warm pork among the salad, and pieces of 
unknown yielding substance in the ragoiit The batcher 
entertained us with pictures of Parisian life, with which he 
professed himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the 
while on the edge of the billiard table, toppling ^^recarious- 
ly, and sucking the stump of a cigar. In the midst of 
these diversions bang went a drum past the house, and a 
hoarse voice began issuing a proclamation. It was a man 
with marionettes announcing a performance for that even- 
ing. 

He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on an- 
other part of the girl's croquet green, under one of those 
open sheds which are so common in France to shelter 
markets; and he and his wife, by the time we strolled up 
there were trying to keep order with the audience. 

It was the most absurd contention. The show-peoj^le 
had set out a certain number of benches; and all who sat 
upon them were to pay a couple of sous for the accommo- 
dation. They were always quite full — a bumper house — 
as long as nothing was going forward; but let the show- 
woman appear with an eye to a collection, and at the first 
rattle of the tambourine the audience slipped off the seats 
and stood round on the outside, with their hands in their 
pockets. It certainly would have tried an angeFs temper. 
The showman roared from the j)roscenium; he had been 
all over France, and nowhere, nowhere, '* not even on the 
borders of Germany, '' had he met with such misconduct. 
Such thieves, and rogues, and rascals as he called them I 
And now and again the wife issued on another round, and 
added her shrill quota to the tirade. I remarked here, as 
elsewhere, how far more copious is the female mind in the 



104 AN IXLAXD VOYAGE. 

mtaterial of insult. The audience laughed in high good- 
humor over the man's declamations; but they bridled and 
cried aloud under the woman's j^ungent sallies. She 
picked out the sore points. She had the honor of the vil- 
lage at her mercy. Voices answered her angrily out of the 
crowd, and received a smarting retort for their trouble. 
A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for 
their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed 
to each other audibly about the impudence of these mounte- 
banks; but as soon as the show woman caught a whisper of 
this she was down upon them with a swoop; mesdames 
could persuade their neighbors to act with common 
honesty, the mountebanks, she asssured them, would be 
polite enough; mesdames had probably had their bowl of 
soup, . and, jDerhaps, a glass of wine that evening; the 
mountebanks, also, had a taste for soup, and did not 
choose to have their little earnings stolen from them be- 
fore their eyes. Once, things came as far as a brief per- 
sonal encounter between the showman and some lads, in 
which the former went down as readily as one of his own 
marionettes to a peal of jeering laughter. 

I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I am 
pretty well acquainted with the ways of French strollers, 
more or less artistic; and have always found them singu- 
larly pleasing. Any stroller must be dear to the right- 
thinking heart; if it were only as a living protest against 
offices and the mercantile spirit, and as something to re- 
mind us that life is not by necessity the kind of thing we 
generally make it. Even a German band, if you see it 
leaving town in the early morning for a camj)aign in coun- 
try places, among trees and meadows, has a romantic flavor 
for the imagination. There is nobody under thirty so dead 
'but his heart will stir a little at sight of a gypsies' camp. 
" We are not cotton-spinners all;'' or, at least, not all 
through. There is some life in humanity yet; and youth 
•will now and again find a brave word to say in dispraise ol 



AN liTLAKD VOYAGE. 105 

riches, and throw up a situation to go strolUng with a 
knapsack. 

An Englishman has always special facilities for inter- 
course with French gymnasts; for England is the natural 
home of gymnasts. This or that fellow, in his tights and 
spangles, is sure to know a word or two of English, to have 
drunk English aff-n-aff, and, perhaps, performed in an 
Enghsh music hall. He isia countryman of mine by pro- 
fession. He leaps like the Belgian boating-men to the 
notion that I must be an athlete myself. 

But the gymnast is not my favorite; he has little or no 
tincture of the artist in his composition; his soul is small 
and pedestrian, for the most i^s-i't^ since his profession 
makes no call upon it, and does not accustom him to high 
ideas. But if a man is only so much of an actor that he 
can stumble through a farce, he is made free of a new 
order of thoughts. He has something else to think about 
beside the money-box. He has a j^ride of his own, and,, 
what is of far more importance, he has an aim before him 
that he can never quite attain. He has gone upon a j^il- 
grimage that will last him his life-long, because there is no 
end to it short of perfection. He will better himself a 
little day by day; or, even if he has given up the attempt^ 
he will always remember that once upon a time he had 
conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time/he fell in 
love with a star. *^ ^Tis better to have loved and lost." 
Although the moon should have nothing to say to Endym- 
ion, although he should settle down with Audrey and 
feed pigs, do you not think he would move with a better 
grace and cherish higher thoughts to the end? The louts 
he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey ^s 
snood; but there is a reminiscence in Endymion^s heart 
that, hke a spice, keeps it fresh and haughty. 

To be even one of the outskirters of art leaves a fine 
stamp on a man's countenance. I remember once dining 
with a party in the inn at Chateau Landon. Most of them 



10(3 Ais" IKLAK^D VOYAGE. 

were unmistakable bagmen; others well-to-do peasantiy; 
"but there was one young fellow in a blouse, whose face 
stood out from among the rest surprisingly. It looked 
more finished; more of the spirit looked out through it; 
it had a living, ex]3ressive air, and you could see that his 
eyes took things in. My comjDanion and I wondered great- 
ly who and what he could be. It was fair time in Chateau 
Landou, and when we went along to the booths we had our 
question answered; for there was our friend busily fiddling 
for the peasants to caper to. He was a wandering 
violinist. 

A troop of strollers once came to the inn where I was 
staying, in the department of Seine et Marne. There 
were a father and mother; two daughters, brazen, blowsy 
hussies, who sung and acted, without an idea of how to set 
iibout either; and a dark young man, like a tutor, a re- 
calcitrant house-painter, who sung and acted not amiss. 
The mother was the genius of the party, so far as genius 
can be spoken of with regard to such a pack of incomi^etent 
humbugs; and her husband could not find words to express 
his admiration for her comic countryman. ** You should 
see my old woman, '^ said he, and nodded his beery coun- 
tenance. One night they performed in the stable-yard with 
flaring lamps: a wretched exhibition, coldly looked upon 
by a village audience. Next night, as soon as the lamps 
were lighted, there came a i^lump of rain, and they had to 
sweep away their baggage as fast as possible, and make off 
to the barn, where they harbored, cold, wet and supperless. 
In the morning a dear friend of mine, who has as warm a 
heart for strollers as I have myself, made a little collection, 
and sent it by my hands to comfort them for their disap- 
pointment. I gave it to the father; he thanked me cordi- 
ally, and we drank a cup together in the kitchen, talking 
of roads, and audiences, and hard times. 

When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with 
his hat. " I am afraid," said he, " that monsieur will 



AK INLAi^D VOYAGE. 107 

think me altogether a beggar; but I have another demand 
to make upon him/' I began to hate him on the spot. 
" We play again to-night_,'' he went on. " Of course I 
shall refuse to accept any more money from monsieur and 
his friends, who have been already so liberal. But oar 
programme of to-night is something truly creditable; and 
I cling to the idea that monsieur will honor us with his 
presence. '^ And then, with a shrug and a smile: '' Mon- 
sieur understands — the vanity of an artist !'' Save the 
mark! The vanity of an artist! That is the kind of thing 
that reconciles me to life: a ragged, tippling, incompetent 
old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman and the vanity 
of an artist, to keep up his self-respect! 

But the man after my own heart is M. de Yauversin. It 
ia nearly two years since I saw him first, and indeed I 
hope I may see him often again. Here is his first programme 
as I found it on the breakfast- table, and have kept it ever 
since as a relic of bright days: 

Mesdames et Messieues, — 

' ' Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Yauversin auront 
Fhonneur de chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants. 

** Mademoiselle Ferrario chantera — Mignon — Oiseaux 
Legers — France — Des Frangais dorment la — Le chateau 
bleu — Ou voulez-vous allerr 

*' M. de Yauversin — Madame Font-aine et M. Robinet 
— Les plongeurs a cheval — Le Mari mecontent — Taisjtoi,. 
gamin — Mon voisin Toriginal — Heureux comme 9a — 
Comme on est trompe. " 

They made a stage at one end of the saJle-a-7nanger. 
And what a sight it was to see M. de Yauversin, with a 
cigarette in his mouth, twanging a guitar, and following 
Mile. Ferarrio's eyes with the obedient, kindly look of a 
dog! The entertainment wound up with a tombola, or 



108 AN INLAIs^D VOYAGE. 

auction of lottery tickets: an admirable amusement, with 
all the excitement of gambling, and no hope of gain to 
make you ashamed of your eagerness; for there, all is loss; 
you make haste to be out of j^ocket; it is a competition 
who shall lose most money for the benefit of M. de Vau- 
versin and Mile. Ferrario. 

M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great head of 
black hair, a vivacious and engaging air, and a smile that 
would be delightful if he had better teeth. He was once 
an actor in the Chdtelet; but he contracted a nervous affec- 
tion from the heat and glare of the footlights, which un- 
fitted him for the stage. At this crisis Mile. Ferrario, 
otherwise Mile. Eita of the Alcazar, agreed to share his 
wandering fortunes. *' I could never forget the generosity 
of that lady,^^ said he. He wears trousers so tight that it 
has long been a problem to all who knew him how he 
manages to get in and out of them. He sketches a little 
in water-colors, he writes verses; he is the most patient of 
fishermen, and spent long days at the bottom of the inn- 
garden fruitlessly dabbling a line in the clear river. 

You should hear him recounting his experiences over a 
bottle of wine; such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with 
a ready smile at his own mishaps, and every now and then 
a sudden gravity, like a man who should hear the surf roar 
while he was telling the perils of the deep. For it was no 
longer ago than last night, perhaps, that the receipts only 
amounted to a franc and a half to cover three francs of 
riailway fare and two of board and lodging. The maire, a 
man worth a million of money, sat in the front seat, re- 
peatedly applauding Mile. Ferrario, and yet gave no more 
than three sous the whole evening. Local authorities look 
with such an evil eye upon the strolling artist. Alas! I 
know it well, who have been myself taken for one, and 
pitilessly incarcerated on the strength of the misapprehen- 
sion. Once, M. de Vauversin visited a commissary of 
police for permission to sing. The commissary, who was 



AK" IlS'LAXD TOYAGE. 109 

smoking at his ease, loolitely doffed his hat upon the singer's 
entrance, '' Mr. Commissary/' he began, '* I am an art- 
ist/' And on went the commissary's hat again. No 
courtesy for the companions of Apollo! " They are as de- 
graded as that/' said M. de Vauversin, with a sweep of 
his cigarette. 

But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when 
we had been talking all the evening of the rubs, indignities, 
and pinchings of his wandering life. Some one said it 
would be better to have a million of money down, and 
Mile. Ferrario admitted that she would prefer that mightily. 
*' Eh Men moi non ;— not I,'' cried De Vauversin, striking 
the table with his hand. *^ If any one is a failure in the 
world, is it not Y: I had an art, in which I have done 
things well — as well as some, better, perhaps, than others; 
and now it is closed against me. I must go about the 
country gathering coppers and singing nonsense. Do you 
think I regret my life? Do you think I would rather be a 
fat burgess, like a calf? Not II I have had moments 
when I have been applauded on the boards: I think noth- 
ing of that; but I have known in my own mind sometimes, 
when I had not a clap from the whole house, that I had 
found a true intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; 
and then, messieurs, I have known what pleasure \vas, 
what it was to do a thing well, what it was to be an artist. 
And to know what art is, is to have an interest forever, 
such as no burgess can find in his petty concerns. Tenez, 
messieurs, je vais voics le dire — it is like a religion.'' 

Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory 
and the inaccuracies of translation, was the profession of 
faith of M. de Vauversin. I have given liim his own name, 
lest any other wanderer should come across him, with his 
guitar and cigarette, and Mile. Ferrario; for should not all 
the world dehght to honor tliis unfortunate and loyal fol- 
lower of the Muses? May Apollo send him rhymes hitherto 
undreamed-of; may tlie river be no longer scanty of her 



110 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

silver fishes to his lure; may the cold not pinch him on 
long winter rides, nor the village jack-in-office affront him 
with unseemly manners; and may he never miss Mile. Fer- 
rario from his side, to follow with his dutiful eyes and ac- 
company on the guitar! 

The marionettes made a very dismal entertainment. 
They performed a piece called '* Pyramus and Thisbe/' in 
five mortal acts, and all written in Alexandrines fully as 
long as the performers. One marionette was the king; 
another the wicked counselor; a third, credited with ex- 
ceptional beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there were 
guards, and obdurate fathers, and walking gentlemen. 
Nothing particular took place during the two or three acts 
that I sat out; but you will be pleased to learn that the 
imities were properly respected, and the whole piece, with 
one exception, moved in harmony with classical rules. 
That exception was the comic countryman, a lean marion- 
ette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and in a broad 
'patois much appreciated by the audience. He took uncon- 
stitutional liberties with the person of his sovereign : kicked 
his fellow-marionettes in the mouth with his wooden shoes, 
and whenever none of the versifying suitors were about, 
made love to Thisbe on his own account in comic prose. 

This fellow ^s evolutions, and the little prologue, in which 
the showman made a humorous eulogium of his troop, 
praising their indifference to applause and hisses, and their 
single devotion to their art, were the only circumstances in 
the whole affair that you could fancy would so much as 
raise a smile. But the villagers of Precy seemed delighted. 
Indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibition, and you pay ta 
see it, it is nearly certain to amuse. If we were charged 
so much a head for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum 
before the hawthorns came in flower, what a work should 
we not make about their beauty! But these things, like 
good companions, stupid people early cease to observe; and 
the Abstract Bagman tittups j^ast in his spring gig, and is 



AK" IKLAND VOYAGE. Ill 

positively not aware of the flowers along the lane, or the 
scenery of the weather overhead. 



BACK TO THE WORLD. 

Of the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, 
and nothing whatever in my note-book. Th*e river streamed 
on steadily through pleasant river-side landscapes. Wash- 
erwomen in blue dresses, fishers in blue blouses, diversified 
the green banks; and the relation of the two colors was like 
that- of the flower and the leaf in the forget-me-not. A 
symphony in forget-me-not; I think Theophile Gautier 
might thus have characterized that two days' j)^^^^'^^^^- 
The sky was blue and cloudless; and the sliding surface of 
the river held up, in smooth places, a mirror to the heaven 
and the shores. The washerwomen hailed us laughingly; 
and the noise of trees and water made an accompaniment 
to our dozing thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream. 

The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, 
held the mind in chain. It seemed now so sure of its end, 
so strong and easy in its gait, like a grown man full of de- 
termination. The surf was roaring for it on the sands of 
Havre. For my own part slipping along this moving 
thoroughfare in my fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was begin- 
ning to grow a-weary for my c^ean. To the civilized man 
there must come, sooner or later, a desire for civilization. 
I was weary of di23piug the paddle; I was weary of living 
on the skirts of life; 1 wished to be in the thick of it once 
more; I wished to get to work; I wished to meet people 
who understood my own speech, and could meet with me 
on equal terms, as a man, and no longer as a curiosity. 

And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew u]) 
our keels for the last time out of that river of Oise that 
had faithfully piloted them, through rain and sunshine, for 
SO long. For so many miles had this fleet and footless 



112 AN INLAND YOYAGE. 

beast of burden charioted our fortunes that we turned our 
back upon it with a sense of separation. We had a long 
detour out of the world, but now we were back in the 
familiar places, where life itself makes all the running, and 
we are carried to meet adventure without a stroke of the- 
paddle. Now we were to return, like the voyager in the 
play, and see what rearrangements fortune had perfected 
the while in our surroundings; what surprises stood ready 
made for us at home; and whither and how far the world 
had voyaged in our absence. You may paddle all day long; 
but it is when you come back at nightfall, and look in at 
the familiar room, that you find Love or Death awaiting 
you beside the stove; and the most beautiful adventures 
are not those we go to seek. 



THE END. 



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NEW TABERNACLE SERMONS 



BY 



I[EV. T. DeWITT TALMjlGE, D.D. 



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MUNRO'S PUBLICATIONS. 




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(P. O. Box 3751.) 17 to 27 Van de water Street, New York. 



LIST OF AUTHORS. 



Works by the author of •' Addie's 
Husband." 

388 Addie's Husband ; or, Through 

Clouds to Sunshine 10 

504 My Poor Wife 10 

Works by the author of " A Fatal 
Dower." 

246 A Fatal Dower 10 

372 Phyllis' Probation 10 

461 His Wedded W^ife 20 

829 The Actor's Ward 20 

Works by the author of " A Great 
Mistake." 

244 A Great Mistake 20 

588 Cherry 10 

Works bv the author of "A 
Woman's Love-Story." 

322 A Woman's Love-Story 10 

677 Griselda 20 

Mrs. Alexander's Works. 

5 The Admiral's Ward 20 

17 The Wooing O't 20 

62 The Executor 20 

189 Valerie's Fate 10 

2^29 Maid, Wife, or Widow? 10 

236 Which Shall it Be?. 20 

339 Mrs. Vereker's Courier Maid. . . 10 

490 A Second Life 20 

564 At Bay 10 

794 Beaton's Bargain 20 



797 Look Before You Leap 20 

805 The Freres. 1st half 20 

805 The Freres. 2d half 20 

806 Her Dearest Foe 2a 

814 The Heritage of Langdale 20 

815 Ralph Wilton's Weird la 

Alisou's Works. 

194 " So Near, and Yet So Far!". . . 10 

278 For Life and Love 10 

481 The House That Jack Built. ... 10 

F. Anstey's Works. 

59 Vice Versa 20 

225 The Giant's Robe 20 

503 The Tinted Venus. A Farcical 

Romance 10 

819 A Fallen Idol 20- 

R. M. Ballantyne's Works. 

89 The Red Eric 10 

95 The Fire Brigade 10 

96 Erling the Bold 10 

772 Gascoyne, th«i Sandal-Wood 

Trader 20 

S. Baring-Gould's Works. 

787 Court Royal 20 

878 Little Tu'penny 10 

Basil's Works. 

344 " The Wearing of the Green " . . 20 

5!7 A Coquette's Conquest 20 

5^5 A Drawn Game 20 



THE SEASIDE LIBRARY 



Anue Scale's Works. 

188 Idonea 20 

199 The Fisher Village 10 

Walter Besaut's Works. 

97 All in a Garden Fair 20 

137 Uncle Jack 10 

140 A Glorious Fortune 10 

146 Love Finds the Way, and Other 

Stories. By Besant and Rice 10 

230 Porothy Forster 20 

324 In Luck at Last 10 

541 Uncle Jack 10 

€51 " Self or Bearer " 10 

^2 Children of Gibeon 20 

M. Betham-Ed wards' 8 Works. 

273 Love and Mirage ; or, The Wait- 
ing on an Island 10 

579 The Flower of Doom, and Other 

Stories 10 

594 Doctor Jacob 20 

William Black's Works. 

«.'- 1 Yolande 20 

18 Shandon Bells 20 

21 Sunrise : A Story of These 

Times 20 

23 A Princess of Thule 20 

39 In Silk Attire 20 

44 Macleod of Dare 20 

49 That Beautiful Wretch 20 

50 The Strange Adventures of a 

Phaeton 20 

70 White Wings : A Yachting Ro- 
mance 10 

- 78 Madcap Violet 20 

81 A Daughter of Heth 20 

124 Three Feathers 20 

125 The Monarch of Mincing Lane. 20 

126 Kilmeny 20 

138 Green Pastures and Piccadilly. 20 
265 Judith Shakespeare : Her Love 

Affairs and Other Adventures 20 
472 The Wise Women of Inverness. 10 
627 White Heather 20 

R. D. Blackmore's Works. 

67 Lorna Doone. 1st half 20 

67 Lorna Doone. 2d half 20 

427 The Remarkable History of Sir 

Thomas Upmore, Bart., M. P. 20 

€15 Mary Anerley 20 

625 Erema ; or, ]\Iy Father's Sin ... 20 

629 Ciipps, the Carrier 20 

630 Cradock Nowell. First half... 20 

630 Cradock Nowell. Second half . 20 

631 Christowell. A Dartmoor Tale 20 

632 c lara Vaughan 20 

633 The Maid of Sker. First half. . 20 
633 The Maid of Sker. Second half 20 

636 Alice Lorraine. First half 20 

636 Alice Lorraine. Second half.. 20 

Miss M. E. Braddon's Works. 

35 Lady Audley's Secret 20 

56 Phantom Fortune 20 

74 Aurora Floyd 20 

110 Under the Red Flag 10 



153 The Golden Calf 20 

204 Vixen 20 

211 The Octoroon 10 

2Si Barbara ; or, Splendid Misery. . 20 

263 An Ishmaelite 20 

315 The Mistletoe Bough. Edited 

by Miss Braddon 20 

434 Wyllard's Weird 20 

478 Diavola; or, Nobody's Daugh- 
ter. Parti 20 

478 Diavola; or, Nobody's Daugh- 
ter. Part II 20 

480 Married in Haste. Edited by 

Miss M. E. Braddon 20 

487 Put to the Test. Edited by Miss 

M. E. Braddon 20 

48H Joshua Haggard's Daughter.. . . 20 
489 Rupert Godwin 20 

495 Mount Royal 20 

496 Only a Woman. Edited by Miss 

M. E. Braddon 20 

497 The Lady's Mile 20 

498 Only a Clod 20 

499 The Cloven Foot 20 

511 A Strange World 20 

515 Sir Jasper's Tenant 20 

524 Strangers and Pilgrims 20 

529 The Doctor's Wife 20 

54-^ Fenton's Quest 20 

541 Cut by the County: or, Grace 

Darnel 10 

548 The Fatal Marriage, and The 

Shadow in the Corner 10 

549 Dudley Carleon; or. The Broth- 

er's Secret, and George Caul- 
field's Journey. 10 

552 Hostages to Fortune 20 

553 Birds of Prey 20 

554 Charlotte's Inheritance. (Se- 

quel to " Birds of Prey ").... 20 
557 To the Bitter End 20 

559 Taken at the Flood 20 

560 Asphodel 20 

561 Just as I am; or, A Living Lie 20 

567 Dead Men's Shoes 20 

570 John Marchmont's Legacy. ... 20 
618 The Mistletoe Bough. Christ- 
mas, 1885. Edited by Miss M. 

E. Braddon 20 

840 One Thing Needful; or, The Pen- 
alty of Fate 20 

881 Mohawks 20 

Works by Charlotte M. Braeme, 
Author of " Dora Thoi'ne.'* 

19 Her Mother's Sin 10 

51 Dora Thorne 20 

54 A Broken Wedding-Ring 20 

68 A Queen Amongst Women 10 

69 Madolin's Lover 20 

73 Redeemed by Love 20 

76 Wife in Name Only 20 

79 Wedded and Parted 10 

92 Lord Lynne's Choice : . 10 

148 Thorns and Orange-Blossoms.. 10 

190 Romance of a Black Veil 10 

220 Which Loved Him Best? 10 

237 Repented at Leisure 20 

249 " Prince Charlie's Daughter ". . 10 



POCKET EDITION. 



Ill 



Charlotte M. Braeine's Works 

(CONTINUED). 

250 Sunshine and Roses; or, Di- 
ana's Discipline 10 

254 Tlie Wife's Secret, and Fair 

but False 10 

283 The Sin of a Lifetime 10 

287 At War With Herself 10 

288 From Gloom to Sunlight 10 

291 Love's Wa rfare 10 

292 A Golden Heart 10 

293 The Shadow of a Sin 10 

294 Hilda 10 

295 A Woman's War 10 

296 A Rose in Thorns 10 

297 Her Marriage Vow ; or, Hilary's 

Follv 10 

299 The .Fatal Lilies, and A Bride 

from the Sea 10 

300 A Gilded Sin, and A Bridge of 

Love 10 

303 Ingledew House, and More Bit- 

ter than Death 10 

304 In Cupid's Net 10 

305 A Dead Heart, and LaUy Gwen- 

doline's Dream 10 

306 A Golden Dawn, and Love for 

a Day , 10 

307 Two Kisses, and Like no Other 

Love 10 

308 Beyond Pardon 20 

411 A Bitter Atonement 20 

433 My Sister Kate 10 

459 A Woman's Temptation 20 

460 Uuder a Shadow 20 

465 The Earl's Atonement 20 

466 Between Two Loves 20 

467 A Struggle for a Ring 20 

469 Lady Dam er's Secret 20 

470 Evelyn's Follv 20 

471 Thrown on the World 20 

476 Between Two Sins 10 

516 Put Asunder; or. Lady Castle- 

maine's Divorce 20 

576 Her Martyrdom 20 

626 A Fair Mystery 20 

741 The Heiress of Hilldrop; or, 
The Romance of a Young 

Girl 20 

745 For Another's Sin ; or, A Strug- 
gle for Love 20 

792 Set in Diamonds 20 

821 The World Between Them 20 

853 A True Maedalen 20 

854 A Woman's Error 20 

Charlotte Bronte's Works. 

15 Jane Ej^re ^^20 

57 Shirley 20 

llhoda Broughton's Works. 

86 Belinda 20 

101 Second Thoughts 20 

227 Nancy 20 

645 Mrs. Smith of Longmains 10 

758 " Good-bye, Sweetheart 1" 20 

765 Not Wisely. But Too Well 20 

767 Joan .' 20 



768 Red as a Rose is She 20 

769 Cometh Up as a Flower 20 

862 Betty's Visions 10 

Mary E. Bryan's W^orks. 

731 The Bayou Bride 20 

857 Kildee; or. The Sphinx of the 

Red House. 1st half 20 

857 Kildee; or. The Sphinx of the 

Red House. 2d half 20 

Robert Buchanan's Works. 

145 " Storm-Beaten :" God and The 

Man 20 

154 Annan Water 20 

181 The New Abelard 10 

398 Matt : A Tale of a Caravan .... 10 
646 The Master of the Mine 20 

Captain Fred Buruaby's W'orks. 

375 A Ride to Khiva 20 

384 On Horseback Through Asia 

Minor 20 

E. Fairfax Byrrne's Works. 

521 Entangled 20 

538 A Fair Country Maid 20 

Hall Caiue's Works. 

445 The Shadow of a Crime 20 

520 She's All the World to Me 10 

Rosa Nouchette Carey's Works. 

215 Not Like Other Girls 20 

396 Robert Ord's Atonement 20 

551 Barbara Heathcote's Trial 20 

608 For Lilias 20 

Lewis Carroll's Works. 
462 Alice's Adventures in Wonder- 
land. Illustrated by John 

Tenniel 20 

789 Through the Looking-Glass, 
and What Alice Found There. 
Illustrated by John Tenniel. . 20 

Mrs. H. liOvett Cameron's W^orks. 

595 A North Country Maid 20 

796 In a Grass Country 20 

Wilkie Collins's Works. 

52 The New Magdalen 10 

102 The Moonstone 20 

167 Heart and Science 20 

168 No Thoroughfare. By Dickens 

and Collins 10 

175 Love's Random Shot, and Other 

Stories 10 

2SS " I Say No;" or, The Love-Let- 

ter Answered 20 

508 The Girl at the Gate 10 

591 The Queen of Hearts 20 

613 The Ghost's Touch, and Percy 

and the Prophet 10 

623 Mv Ladv's Monev 10 

701 The Woman in AVhite. 1st half 20 

701 The Woman in White. 2d half 20 

702 Man and Wife. 1st half 20 

70? Man and Wife. 2d half 20 

764 The Evil Genius 20 



THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. 



3Iabel Colliiis's Works. 

749 Lord Vanecourfs Daughter 20 

828 The Prettiest Woman in Warsaw 20 

Hugrli Conway's Works. 

240 Called Back 10 

251 The Daughter of the Stars, and 

Other Tales 10 

301 Dark Days 10 

302 The Blatchford Bequest 10 

502 Carriston's Gift 10 

5t25 Paul Vargas, and Other Stories 10 

543 A Family Affair 20 

601 Slings and Arrows, and Other 

Stories 10 

711 A Cardinal Sin 20 

804 Living or Dead 20 

830 Bound by a Spell 20 

J. Feuiinore Cooper's Woi'ks. 

60 The Last of the Mohicans 20 

63 The Spy 20 

309 The Pathfinder 20 

310 The Prairie 20 

318 The Pioneers; or, The Sources 

of the Susquehanna 20 

349 The Two Admirals 20 

359 The Water- Witch 20 

361 The Red Rover 20 

373 Wing and Wing 20 

378 Homeward Bound; or, The 

Chase 20 

379 Home as Found. (Sequel to 

" Homeward Bound") 20 

380 Wyandotte ; or. The Hutted 

Knoll 20 

385 The Headsman ; or, The Ab- 

baye des Vignerons 20 

394 The Bravo 20 

397 Lionel Lincoln; or, The Leag- 
uer of Boston 20 

400 The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish. . . 20 

413 Afloat and Ashore 20 

414 Miles Wallingford. (Sequel to 

" Afloat and Ashore ") 20 

415 The Ways of the Hour 20 

416 Jack Tier: or. The Florida Reef 20 

419 TheChainbearer; or,The Little- 

page Manuscripts 20 

420 Satanstoe; or, The Littlepage 

Jlanuscripts 20 

421 The Redskins; or, Indian and 

Injin. Being the conclusion 
of the Littlepage Manuscripts 20 

422 Precaution 20 

423 The Sea Lions; or, The Lost 

Sealers 20 

424 Mercedes of Castile; or. The 

Voyage to Cathay 20 

425 The Oak-Openings ; or. The Bee- 

Hunter 20 

431 TheMonikins 20 

Georgiana M. Craik's Works. 

4.50 Godfrey Helstone 20 

606 Mrs. Hollyer 20 



B. M. Croker's Works. 

207 Pretty Miss Neville 

260 Proper Pride 

412 Some One Else 



la 

20 

May Crominelin's Works. 

452 In the West Countrie 20 

619 Joy ; or. The Light of Cold- 
Home Ford 20 

647 Goblin Gold 10 

Alplionse Daudet's Works. 

534 Jack 20 

574 The Nabob: AStory of Parisian 

Life and Manners 20 

Charles Dickens's Works. 

' 10 The Old Curiosity Shop. .-. 20 

' 22 David Copperfield. Vol. 1 20 

■ 22 David Copperfield. Vol. II.... 20 

24 Pickwick Papers. Vol. 1 20 

24 Pickwick Papers. Vol. II 20 

37 Nicholas Nickleby. First half. 20 
37 Nicholas Nickleby. Second half 20 

41 Oliver Twist 20 

77 A Tale of Two Cities 20 

84 Hard Times 10 

91 Barnaby Rudge. . 1st half 20 

91 Barnaby Rudge. 2d half 20 

94 Little Dorrit. First half 20 

94 Little Dorrit. Second half 20 

106 Bleak House. First half 20 

106 Bleak House. Second half.... 20 

107 Dombey and Son. 1st half 20 

107 Dombey and Son. 2d half 20 

108 The Cricket on the Hearth, and 

Doctor Mangold 10 

131 Our Mutual Friend. (Isthalf). 20 

131 Our Mutual Friend. (2d half).. 20 

132 Master Humphrey's Clock 10 

152 The Uncommercial Traveler. . . 20 

168 No Thoroughfare, By Dickens 

and Collins 10 

169 The Haunted Man 10 

437 Life and Adventures of Martin 

Chuzzlewit. First half 20 

-437 Life and Adventures of Martin 

Chuzzlewit. Second half 20 

439 Great Expectations 20 

440 Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings 10 

447 American Notes 20 

448 Pictures From Italy, and The 

Mudfog Papers. &c 20 

454 The Mystery of Edwin Drood.. 20 
456 Sketches by Boz. Illustrative 
of Every-day Life and Every- 
day People 20 

676 A Child's History of England. 20 

^arali Doiiduey's Woi"ks. 



338 The Family Difficulty 

679 Where Two Ways Meet 

F. Dii Boisgobey's Works. 

82 Sealed Lips 

104 The Coral Pin. Isthalf 

104 The Coial Pin. 2d half 

204 Pi^doLiche, a French Detective. 



POCKET EDITION. 



F. Du Boisgobey's Works 

(continued). 

•328 Babiole, the Pretty Milliner. 

First half 20 

328 Babiole, the Prettj' Milliner, 

Second half 20 

453 The Lottery Ticket 20 

475 Tlie Prima Donna's Husband. . 20 

522 Zig-Zag, the Clown ; or, The 

Steel Gauntlets 20 

523 The Consequences of a Duel. A 

Parisian Romance 20 

648 The Angel of the Bells 20 

€97 The Pretty Jailer. 1st half. ... 20 

C97 Tiie Pretty Jailer. 2d half 20 

€99 The Sculptor's Daughter. 1st 

half 20 

699 The Sculptor's Daughter. 2d 

half 20 

782 Tiie Closed Door. 1st half 20 

782 The Closed Door. 2d half 20 

851 The Cry of Blood. Isfe half . . . . 20 
851 The Cry of Blood. 2d half 20 

"The Duchess's" AVoi'ks. 

2 Molly Bawn 20 

6 Portia 20 

14 Airy Fairy Lilian 10 

16 Phyllis 20 

25 Mrs. Geoffrey 20 

29 Beauty's Daughters 10 

30 Faith and Unfaith 20 

118 Loys, Lord Berresford, and 

Eric Dering 10 

119 Monica, and A Rose Distill'd. . . 10 

123 Sweet is True Love 10 

129 Rossmoyne 10 

134 The Witching Hour, and Other 

Stories 10 

136 "That Last Rehearsal," and 

Other Stories 10 

166 Moonshine and Marguerites 10 

171 Fortune's Wheel, and Other 

Stories... 10 

284 Doris 10 

312 A Week's Amusement; or, A 

Week in Killarney 10 

342 The Baby, and One New Year's 

Eve 10 

390 Mildred Trevanion 10 

404 In Durance Vile, and Other 

Stories 10 

486 Dick's Sweetheart 20 

494 A Maiden All Forlorn, and Bar- 
bara 10 

517 A Passive Crime, and Other 

Stories 10 

541 "As It Fell Upon a Day." 10 

733 Ladv Branksmere 20 

771 A Mental Struggle 20 

785 The Haunted Chamber 10 

862 Ugly Barrington 10 

.875 Lady Vahvorth's Diamonds — 20 

Alexander Dumas's Works, 

55 The Three Guardsmen. . 20 

75 Twenty Years After 20 



259 The Bride of Monte-Cristo. A 
Sequel to "The Count of 
Monte-Cristo " 10 

262 The Count of Monte-Cristo. 

Part I 20 

262 The Count of Monte-Cristo. 

Part II ,. 20 

717 Beau Tancrede; or, The Mar- 
riage Verdict 20 

Maria Edgeworth's Works. 

708 Ormond 20 

788 The Absentee. An Irish Story. 20 

Mrs, Annie Etlwards's Works, 

644 A Girton Girl 20 

834 A Ballroom Repentance 20 

835 Vivian the Beauty 20 

836 A Point of Honor 20 

837 A Vagabond Heroine 10 

838 Ought We to Visit Her? 20 

839 Leah: A Woman of Fashion. . . 20 

841 Jet: Her Face or Her Fortune? 10 

842 A Blue-Stocking 10 

843 Archie Lovell 20 

844 Susan Fielding 20 

845 Philip Earuscliffe; or, The Mor- 

als of May Fair 20 

846 Steven Lawrence. First half. 20 
846 Steven Lawrence. Second half 20 
850 A Playwright's Daughter 10 

Geoi'ge Eliot's Works, 

■ 3 The Mill on the Floss 20 

' 31 Middlemarch. 1st half 20 

31 Middlemarch. 2d half 20 

34 Daniel Deronda. 1st half 20 

34 Daniel Deronda. 2d half , . 20 

36 Adam Bede 20 

42 Romola 20 

693 Felix Holt, the Radical 20 

707 Silas Marner: The Weaver of 

Raveloe 10 

728 Janet's Repentance. 10 

762 Impressions of Theophrastus 

Such 10 

B. li. Farjeou's Works. 

179 Little Make-Believe 10 

573 Love's Harvest 20 

607 Self-Doomed 10 

616 The Sacred Nugget . . 20 

6.57 Christmas Angel 10 

G, Mauville Fenn's Works, 

193 The Rosery Folk 10 

558 Poverty Corner 20 

587 The Parson o' Dumford 20 

609 The Dark House 10 

Octave Feiiillet's Works, 
66 The Romance of a Poor Young 

Man 10 

386 Led Astray; or, "La Petite 

Comtesse "....... 10 

Mrs. Forrester's Works. 

80 June 20 

280 Omnia Vanitas. A Tale of So- 
ciety 10 



THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. 



Mrs. Forrester's Works 

(continued). 

484 Although He Was a Lord, and 

Other Tales 10 

715 I Have Lived and Loved 20 

721 Dolores 20 

724 My Lord and My Lady 20 

726 My Hero 20 

727 Fair Women 20 

729 Mignon 20 

732 From Olympus to Hades 20 

734 Viva 20 

736 Roy and Viola 20 

740 Rhona 20' 

744 Diaua Carew; or, For a Wom- 
an's Sake 20 

883 Once Again 20 

Jessie Jb'othergill's Works. 

314 Peril.....". 20 

572 Healey 20 

B. E. Francil Ion's Works. 

135 A Great Heiress : A Fortune 

in Seven Checks 10 

319 Face to Face : A Fact in Seven 

Fables 10 

360 Ropes of Sand 20 

656 The Golden Flood. By R. E. 

Francillou and Wm. Senior.. 10 

Emile Gaboriau's Works. 

7 File No. 113 20 

12 Other People's Money 20 

20 Within an Inch of His Life. ... 20 

26 Monsieur Lecoq. Vol 1 20 

26 Monsieur Lecoq. Vol. U 20 

33 The Clique of Gold 10 

38 The Widow Lerouge 20 

43 The Mystery of Orcival 20 

144 Promises of Marriage 10 

Charles Gibbon's Works. 

64 A Maiden Fair 10 

317 By Mead and Stream 20 

James Grant's Works. 

566 The Royal Highlanders ; or, 

The Black Watch in Egypt. . . 20 
781 The Secret Dispatch 10 

Miss Grant's Works. 

222 The Sun-Maid 20 

555 Cara Roma 20 

Arthur Griffiths's Works. 

614 No. 99 10 

680 Fast and Loose 20 

H. Rider Haggard's Works. 

432 The Witch's Head 20 

753 King Solomon's Mines, 20 

Thomas Hardy's Works. 

139 The Romantic Adventures of 

a Milkmaid 10 

530 A Pair of Blue Eyes 20 

690 Far From the JIaddinsr Crowd. 20 
791 The Mayor of Casterbridge. ... 20 



John B. Harwood's Works. 

143 One False, Both Fair 20 

358 Within the Clasp 20 

Mary Cecil Hay's Works. 

65 Back to the Old Home 10 

72 Old 3Iyddelton's Money 20 

196 Hidden Perils 10 

197 For Her Dear Sake 20 

224 The Arundel Motto 20 

281 The Squire's Legacy 20 

290 Nora's Love Test 20 

408 Lester's Secret 20 

678 Dorothy's Venture 20 

716 Victor and Vanquished ... 20 

849 A Wicked Girl 20 

Mrs. Cashel-Hoey's Works, 

313 The Lover's Creed 20 

802 A Stern Chase 20 

Tighe Hopkins's Works. 

509 Nell Haffenden 20 

7 14 'Twixt Love and Duty '..'0 

Works by the Author of " Judith 
Wyune.'» 

332 Judith Wynne 20' 

506 Lady Lovelace 20' 

William H. G. Kingston's Works.^ 

117 A Tale of theShore and Ocean. 2ft 

133 Peter the Whaler 10- 

761 Will Weatherhelm 20( 

763 The Midshipman, Marmaduke 

Merry 20 

Vernon liCe's Works. 

399 Miss Brown 20 

859 Ottiiie: An Eighteenth Century 
Idj^l. Bv Vernon Lee. The 
Prince of the 100 Soups. Edit- 
ed by Vernon Lee 20' 

Charles Lever's Works. 

191 Harry Lorrequer 20 

212 Charles O'Malley. the Irish Dra- 
goon. First half 2ft 

212 Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dra- 
goon. Second half 20 

243 Tom Burke of "Ours." First 

half 2ft 

243 Tom Burke of "Ours." Sec- 
ond half 20 

Mary liinskill's Works. 

473 A Lost Son 2ft 

620 Between the Heather and the 

Northern Sea 2ft 

Mrs. E. liynn Linton's Works. 

122 lone Stewart 20 

817 Stabbed in the Dark 10 

Samuel liover's Works. 

663 Handy Andy ^ 

664 Rory O'More ^ 



POCKET EDITION. 



Sjir E. Bulwer Liytf ou's Works. 

- 40 The Last Days of Pompeii 20 

83 A Strange Story 20 

90 Ernest Maltravers 20 

130 Tlie Last of the Barons. First 

half 20 

130 The Last of the Barons. Sec- 
ond half 20 

162 Eug:eue Aram 20 

164 Leila ; or. The Siege of Grenada 10 
650 Alice; or, The Mysteries. (A Se- 
quel to " Ernest Maltravers ") 20 
720 Paul Clifford 20 

George Macdouald's Works. 

282 Doual Grant 20 

325 The Portent 10 

326 Phantastes. A Faerie Romance 

for Men and Women 10 

722 What's Mine's Mine 20 

E, Marlitt's W^orks. 

€52 The Lady with the Rubies 20 

858 Old Ma'm'selle's Secret 20 

Florence Marry at' s Works. 

159 A Moment of Madness, and 

Other Stories 10 

183 Old Contrairy, and Other 

Stones 10 

208 The Ghost of Charlotte Cray, 

and Other Stories 10 

.276 Under the Lilies and Roses.... 10 

444 The Heart of Jane Warner 20 

449 Peeress and Player 20 

689 The Heir Presumptive 20 

825 The Master Passion 20 

860 Her Lord and Master 20 

S61 My Sister the Actress 20 

863 " My Own Child." 20 

S64 " No Intentions." 20 

865 Written in Fire 20 

86f5 Miss Harrington's Husband... 20 

867 The Girls of Feversham 20 

868 Petrouel 20 

869 The Poison of Asps 10 

870 Out of His Reckoning 10 

872 With Cupid's Eyes 20 

873 A Harvest of Wild Oats 20 

877 Facing the Footlights 20 

Captain Marryat's Works. 

88 The Privateersman 20 

272 The Little Savage : . . . 10 

Helen B. Mathers' s Works. 

13 Eyre's Acquittal 10 

221 Comin' Thro' the Rve 20 

438 Found Out ". 10 

535 Murder or Manslaughter? 10 

673 Story of a Sin 20 

713 " Cherry Ripe " 20 

795 Sam's Sweetheart 20 

798 The Fashion of this World 10 

799 My Lady Green Sleeves 20 



Justin McCarthy's Works. 

121 Maid of Athens 20 

602 Camiola 20 

685 England Under Gladstone. 

1880—1885....,, 20 

747 Our Sensation Novel. Edited 

by Justin H. McCarthy, M.P. . 10 
779 Doom ! An Atlantic Episode ... 10 

Mrs, Alex. McVeigh Miller's 
Works. 

267 Laurel Vane; or. The Girls' 

Conspiracy 20 

268 Lady Gay's Pride; or, The 

Miser's Treasure 20 

269 Lancaster's Choice 20 

316 Sworn to Silence; or, Aline 

Rodney's Secret 20 

Jean Middlenias's Works. 

155 Lady Muriel's Secret 20 

539 Silvermead 20 

Alan Muir's Works. 

172 "Golden Girls" 20 

346 Tumbledown Farm 10 

Miss I>Iulock's Works, 

11 John Halifax, Gentleman 20 

245 Miss Tommy, and In a House- 
Boat 10 

808 King Arthur. Not a Love Story 20 

David Christie Murray's Works. 

58 By the Gate of the Sea 10 

195 " The Way of the World " 20 

320 A Bit of Human Nature 10 

661 Rainbow Gold 20 

674 First Person Singular 20 

691 Valentine Strange 20 

695 Hearts: Queen, Knave, and 

Deuce 20 

698 A Life's Atonement 20 

737 Aunt Rachel 10 

826 Cynic Fortime 20 

Works by the author of " My 
Ducats and My Daughter." 

376 The Crime of Christmas Day. 10 
596 My Ducats and My Daughter. . . 20 

"W, E. Morris's Works. 

184 ThirlbyHall 20 

277 A Man of His Word 10 

355 That Terrible Man 10 

500 Adrian Vidal 20 

824 Her Own Doing 10 

848 3Iy Friend Jim 10 

871 A Bachelor's Blunder 20 

liaureuce Oliphant's Works. 

47 Altiora Peto 20 

537 Piccadilly 10 



viii 



THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. 



I m 

Mrs. Campbell Praed's Works. 

428 Zero: A Story of Monte-Carlo, la 
477 Affinities 10 

811 The Head Station 20 

Eleanor C. Price's Works. 

173 The Foreigners 20 

331 Gerald 20 

Charles Reade's Works. 

46 Very Hard Cash 20 

98 A Woman-Hater 20 

206 The Picture, and Jack of All 

Trades 10 

210 Readiana: Comments on Cur- 
rent Events 10 

213 A Terrible Temptation 20 

214 Put Yourself in His Place 20 

216 Foul Play 20 

231 Griffith Gaunt; or, Jealousy... 20 

232 Love and Money ; or, A Perilous 

Secret 10 

235 "It is Never Too Late to 
Mend. ' • A Matter-of -Fact Ro- 
mance 20 

Mrs. J. H. Riddell's Works. 

71 A Struggle for Fame 20 

593 Berna Boyle 20 

"Rita's" Works, 

252 A Sinless Secret 10 

446 Dame Durden 20 

598 " Corinna." A Study 10 

617 LikeDian's Kiss 20 

F. W. Robinson's Works. 

157 Milly's Hero 20 

217 The Man She Cared For 20 

261 A Fair Maid 20 

455 Lazarus in London 20 

590 The Courtiug of Mary Smith, . . 20 

W. Clark RusselPs Works. 

85 A Sea Queen 20 

109 Little Loo 20 

ISO Round the Galley Fire 10 

209 John Holdsworth, Chief Mate.. 10 

223 A Sailor's Sweetheart 20 

592 A Strano:e Voyage 20 

682 In the Middle Watch. Sea 

Stories. 20 

743 Jack's Courtship. 1st half.... 20 
743 Jack's Courtship. 2d half 20 

Adeline Sergeant's Works. 

2.57 Bevond Recall 10 

812 No Saint 20 

Sir Walter Scott's Works. 

28 Ivanhoe 20 

201 The Monastery 20 

202 The Abbot. (Sequel to "The 

Monastery ") 20 

353 The Black Dwarf, and A Le- 
gend of Montrose 20 

362 The Bride of Lammermoor., . 20 

.363 Tiie Surgeon's Daughter 10 

364 Castle Dangerous 10 



Mrs. Olipliant's Works. 

45 A Little Pilgrim 10 

177 Salem Chapel 20 

205 The Minister's Wife 30 

321 The Prodigals, and Their In- 
heritance 10 

337 Memoirs and Resolutions of 
Adam Graeme of Mossgray, 
including some Chronicles of 

the Borough of Fendie 20 

346 Madam 20 

351 The House on the Moor 20 

357 John 20 

370 Lucy Crof ton 10 

371 Margaret Maitland 20 

377 Magdalen Hepburn : A Story of 

the Scottish Reformation 20 

402 Lilliesleaf ; or, Passages in the 
Life of Mrs. Margaret Mait- 
land of Sunnyside 20 

410 Old Lady Mary 10 

.527 The Davs of My Life 20 

528 At His Gates 20 

568 The Perpetual Curate 20 

569 Harry Muir 20 

603 Agnes. 1st half 20 

603 Agnes. 2d half 20 

604 Innocent. 1st half 20 

604 Innocent. 2d half 20 

605 Ombra 20 

645 Oliver's Bride 10 

655 The Open Door,and The Portrait 10 

687 A Counti-y Gentleman 20 

703 A House Divided Against Itself 20 
710 The Greatest Heiress in England 20 

827 Effle Ogilvie 20 

880 The Son of His Father 20 

"Ouida's" Works. 

4 Under Two Flags 20 

9 Wanda, Countess von Szalras.. 20 

116 Moths 20 

128 Afternoon and Other Sketches. 10 

226 Friendship 20 

228 Princess Napraxine 20 

238 Pascarel 20 

239 Signa ; 20 

433 A Rainy June 10 

639 Othmar 20 

671 Don Gesualdo 10 

672 In Maremma. First half 20 

672 In Maremma. Second half — 20 
874 A House Party 10 

James Payn's Works. 

48 Tliicker Than Water 20 

186 The Canon's Ward 20 

343 The Talk of the Town 20 

577 In Peril and Privation 10 

589 The Luck of the Darrells 20 

823 The Heir of the Ages 20 

Miss Jane Porter's Works. 
660 The Scottish Chiefs. 1st half. . 20 
660 Tlie Scottish Chiefs. 2d half.. 20 

696 Thaddeus of Warsaw 20 

Cecil Power's Works. 

336 Philistia.... 20 

611 Babylon 20 



POCKET EDITION. 



IX 



Sir Walter Scott's Works 

(continued^ 
391 The Heart of Mid-Lothiau. .. . . 20 

-392 Peveril of the Peak 20 

393 The Pirate 20 

401 Waverlev 20 

417 Tlie Fair Maid of Perth; or, St. " 

Valentine's Daj- 20 

418 St. Rouau's Well 20 

463 Redgauntlet. A Tale of the 

Eighteenth Century 20 

507 Chronicles of the Canongate, 

and Other Stories 10 

William Sinie's Works. 

429 Boulderstone; or. New Men and 

Old Popiilations 10 

580 The Red Route 20 

597 Haco the Dreamer 10 

649 Cradle and Spade 20 

Hawley Smart's Works. 

S48 From Post to Finish. A Racing 

Romance 20 

367 Tie and Trick 20 

550 Struck Down 10 

847 Bad to Beat 10 

Frauk E. Smedley's Woi'ks. 

333 Frank Fairlegh; or, Scenes 
from the Life of a Private 
Pupil 20 

562 Lewis Arundel; or, The Rail- 
road of Life 20 

T. W. Speight's Works. 

150 For Himself Alone. 10 

653 A Barren Title 10 

Robert Louis Stevenson's Works. 

686 Strange Case of Dr. Jekj-11 and 

Mr. Hyde 10 

704 Prince Otto 10 

832 Kidnapped 20 

855 The Dynamiter 20 

«56 New Arabian Nights 20 

Julian Sturgis's Works. 

405 My Friends and L Edited by 

Julian Sturgis 10 

€94 John Maidment 20 

Eugene Sue's Works. 

■270 The Wandering Jew, Parti... 20 

270 The Wandering Jew. Part H. . 20 
■271 The Mysteries of Paris. Part 1 . 20 

271 The Mysteries of Paris. PartH. 20 

George Temple's Works. 

599 Lancelot Ward, M.P 10 

642 Britta 10 

W^illiam M. Thackeray's Works. 

- 27 Vanity Fair 20 

165 The History of Henry Esmond. 20 

464 The Newcomes. Part 1 20 

464 The Newcomes. Part II 20 

€70 The Rose and the Ring. Illus- 
trated 10 



Works by the Author of "The 
Two Miss Flemings." 

637 Whafs His Offence? 20 

780 Rare Pale Margaret 20 

784 The Two Miss Flemings 20 

831 Pomegranate Seed 20 

Auuie Thomas's Works. 

141 She Loved Him ! 10 

142 Jenifer 20 

565 No Medium 10 

Anthony Trollope's Works. 

32 The Land Leaguers 20 

93 Anthony Trollope's Autobiog- 
raphy 20 

147 Rachel Ray 20 

200 An Old Man's Love 10 

531 The Prime Minister. 1st half. . 20 

531 The Prime Minister. 2d half.. . 20 

621 The Warden 10 

622 Harrv Heathcote of Ganeroil. . . 10 
667 The Golden Lion of Granpere. . 20 

700 Ralph the Heir. 1st half 20 

700 Ralph the Heir. 2d half 20 

775 The Three Clerks 20 

lUnraTJtTt Veley's Works. 

298 Mitchelhurst Place. 10 

586 " For Percival "... 20 

Jules Verne's Works. 

87 Dick Sand ; or, A Captain at 
Fifteen 20 

100 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. 20 

368 The Southern Star; or, the Dia- 
mond Land 20 

395 The Archipelago on Fire 10 

578 Mathias Sandorf. Illustrated. 

Part 1 10 

578 Mathias Sandorf. Illustrated. 

Part II. .r 10 

578 Mathias Sandorf. Illustrated. 

Part III 10 

659 The Waif of the " Cynthia "... 20 

751 Great Voyages and Great Navi-' 
gators. First half 20 

751 Great Voyages and Great Navi- 
gators. Second half 20 

833 Ticket No. " 9672." First half. 10 

I.. B. Walford's Works. 

241 The Baby's Grandmother 10 

256 Mr. Smith : A Part of His Life. 20 

258 Cousins 20 

658 The History of a Week 10 

F. Warden's Works. 

192 At the World's Mercy 10 

248 The House on the Marsh 10 

286 Deldee; or. The Iron Hand.... 20 

482 A Vagrant Wife 20 

.556 A Prince of Darkness 20 

820 Doris's Fortune 10 



THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. 



William Ware's Works. 

709 Zenobia; or, The Fall of Pal- 

mj-ra. 1st half 20 

r09 Zenobia; or, The Fall of Pal- 
myra. 2d half 20 

reo Aurelian; or, Rome m the Third 
Century 20 

E. Werner's Woi'ks. 

827 Raymond's Atonement 20 

540 At a High Price 20 

Q.-J. Wliyte-Melvllle's Works. 

409 Roy's Wife 20 

451 Market Harborough, and Inside 
the Bar 20 

John Strange Winier's Works. 

492 Mignon ; or, Booties' Baby. Il- 
lustrated 10 

GOO Houp-La. Illustrated 10 

638 In Quarters with the 25th (The 

Black Horse) Dragoons 10 

688 A Man of Honor. Illustrated.. 10 
746 Cavalry Life; or, Sketches and 

Stories in Barracks and Out. . 20 
813 Army Society. Life in a Gar- 
rison Town 10 

818 Pluck 10 

876 Mignon's Secret 10 

Mrs. Henry Wood's Works. 

8 East Lynne 20 

2.55 The Mystery 20 

277 The Surgeon's Daughters 10 

508 The Unholy Wish 10 

513 Helen Whitney's Wedding, and 

Other Tales 10 

514 The Mystery of Jessy Page, and 

Other Tales 10 

610 The Story of Dorothy Grape, 

and Other Tales 10 

Charlotte M. Yongre's Works. 

247 The Armourer's Prentices 10 

275 The Three Brides 10 

535 Henrietta's Wish; or. Domi- 
neering '. 10 

563 The Two Sides of the Shield.. . . 20 
640 Nuttie's Father 20 

665 The Dove in the Eagle's Nest.. 20 

666 My Young Alcides: A Faded 

Photograph 20 

739 The Caged Lion 20 

742 Love and Life 20 

783 Chantry House 20 

790 The Chaplet of Pearls ; or, The 

White and Black Ribaumont. 

First half 20 

790 The Chaplet of Pearls; or, The 

White and Hlack Ribaumont. 

Second half 20 

800 Hopes and Fears; or, Scenes 

from the Life of a Spinster. 

First half 20 

800 Hopes and Fears; or, Scenes 

from the Life of a Spinster. 

Second half 20 



Miscellaneous. 

53 The Story of Ida. Francesca. . 10 
61 Charlotte Temple. Mrs. Row- 
son 10 

99 Barbara's History. Amelia B. 

Edwards 20 

103 Rose Fleming. Dora Russell . . 10 
105 A Noble Wife. John Saunders 20 

111 The Little School-master Mark. 

J. H. Shorthouse 10 

112 The Waters of Marah. John 

Hill 20 

113 Mrs. Carr's Companion. M. G. 

Wightwick 10 

114 Some of Our Girls. Mrs. C. J. 

Eiloart 20 

115 Diamond Cut Diamond. T. 

Adolphus Trollope 10 

^.120 Tom Brown's School Days at 

Rugby. Thomas Hughes 20 

127 Ad rian Bright. Mrs. Caddy .... 20 
149 The Captain's Daughter. From 

the Russian of Pushkin 10 

151 The Ducie Diamonds. C. Blath- 

erwick 10 

156 "For a Dream's Sake." Mrs. 

Herbert Martin 20 

158 The Starling. Norman Mac- 

leod, D.D 10 

160 Her Gentle Deeds. Sarah Tytler 10 

161 The Lady of Lyons. Founded 

on the Play of that title by 

Lord Ly tton 10 

163 Winifred Power. Joyce Dar- 

rell 2d 

170 A Great Treason. Mary Hop- 
pus 30 

174 Under a Ban. Mrs. Lodge 20 

17'6 An April Day. Philippa Pri^ 

tie Jephson 10 

178 More Leaves from the Journal 
of a Life in the Highlands. , 

Queen Victoria 10 

182 The Millionaire 20 

185 Dita. Lady Margaret Majendie 10 
187 The Midnight Sun. Fredrika 

Bremer 10 

198 A Husband's Storv 10 

203 John Bull and His Island. Max 

O'Rell 10 

218 Agues Sorel. G. P. R. James. . 20 

219 Lady Clare : or, The Master of 

the Forges. Georges Ohnet 10 
242 The Two Orphans. D'Ennery. 10 
253 The Amazon. Carl Vosmaer. . 10 
•2GG The Water-Babies. Rev. Chas. 

Kingsley 10 

274 Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, 
Princess of Great Britain and 
Ireland. Biographical Sketch 

and Letters 10 

279 Little G oldie : A Story of Wom- 
an's Love. Mrs. Sumner Hay- 
den 20 

285 The Gambler's Wife 20 

289 John Bull's Neighbor in Her 
True Light. A '• Brutal Sax- 
on" 19 



POCKET EDITION. 



XI 



Misceiraneous— Continued. 

311 Two Years Before the Mast. R. 

H. Dana, Jr 20 

323 A Willful Maid 20 

329 The Polish Jew. (Translated 

from the French by Caroline 
A. Merighi.) Erckmaun-Chat- 
rian , 10 

330 May Blossom ; or, Between Two 

Loves. Margaret Lee 20 

334 A Marriage of Convenience. 

Harriett Jay 10 

335 The White Witch 20 

340 Under Which King? Compton 

Reade 20 

341 Madolin Rivers ; or. The Little 

Beauty of Red Oak Seminary. 

Laura Jean Libbey 20 

347 As Avon Flows. Henry Scott 

Vince 20 

350 Diana of the Crossways. George 

Meredith 10 

352 At Any Cost, Edward Garrett. 10 

354 The Lottery of Life. A Story 

of New York Twenty Years 
Ago. John Brougham 20 

355 Tne Princess Dagomar of Po- 

land. Heinrich Felbermann. 10 

356 A Good Hater. Frederick Boyle 20 

365 George Chilsty ; or, The Fort- 

unes of a Minstrel. Tony 
Pastor 20 

366 The Mysterious Hunter; or, 

The Man of Death. Capt. L. 
C. Carleton 20 

369 Miss Bretherton. Mrs. Hum- 
phry Ward 10 

374 The Dead Man's Secret. Dr. 

Jupiter Paeon 20 

381 The Red Cardinal. Frances 

Elliot 10 

382 Three Sisters. Elsa D'Esterre- 

Keeliug 10 

383 Introduced to Society. Hamil- 

ton Aid6 10 

387 The Secret of the Cliffs. Char- 
lotte French 20 

389 Ichabod. A Portrait. Bertha 

Thomas 10 

403 An English Squire. C. R. Cole- 
ridge 20 

406 The Merchant's Clerk. Samuel 

Warren 10 

407 Tylney Hall. Thomas Hood ... 20 
426 Veuus's Doves. Ida Ashworth 

Taj^lor 20 

430 A Bitter Reckoning. Author 

of "By Crooked Paths".... 10 

435 Klytia: A Story of Heidelberg ^ 

Castle. George Taylor 20 

436 Stella. Fanny Lewald 20 

441 A Sea Change. Flora L. Shaw. 20 

442 Ranthorpe. George Henry 

Lewes 20 

443 The Bachelor of the Albany. . . 10 
457 The Russians at the Gate's of 

Herat. Charles Marvin 10 



458 A Week of Passion; or. The 
Dilemma of Mr. George Bar- 
ton the Younger. Edward 
Jenkins 20 

468 The Fortunes, Good and Bad, 
of a Sewing-Girl. Charlotte 
M. Stanley la 

474 Serapis. An Historical Novel. 

George Ebers 20 

479 Louisa. Katharine S. Macquoid 20 

488 Betwixt My Love and Me. By 

author of " A Golden Bar "... 10 

485 Tinted Vapours. J. Maclaren 

Cobban 10 

491 Society in London. A Foreign 

Resident ... 10 

493 Colonel Enderby's Wife. Lucas 

Malet 20 

501 Mr. Butler's Ward. . F. Mabel 

Robinson 20 

504 Curly : An Actor's Story. John 

Coleman. 10 

505 The Society of Loudon. Count 

Paul Vasili 10 

510 A Mad Love. Author of " Lover 

and Lord " . . 10 

512 The Waters of Hercules 20 

518 The Hidden Sin 20 

519 James Gordon's Wife 20 

526 Madame De Presnel. E. Fran- 
ces Poynter 20 

532 Arden Court. Barbara Graham 20 

533 Hazel Kirke. Marie Walsh. ... 20 
536 Dissolving Views. Mrs. Andrew 

Lang 10 

545 Vida's Story. By the author of 

" Guilty Without Crime "■>. . 10 

546 Mrs. Keith's Crime. A Novel . . 10 
571 Paul Crew's Story. Alice Co- 

myns Carr 10 

575 The Finger of Fate. Captain 

Mayne Reid 20 

581 The Betrothed. (I Promessi 

Sposi.) Allessandro Manzoni 20 

582 Lucia, Hugh and Another. Mrs. 

J. H. Needell 20 

583 Victory Deane. Cecil Griffith . . 20 

584 Mixed Motives 10 

599 Lancelot Ward, M.P. George 

Temple 10 

612 My Wife's Niece. By the author 

of " Dr. Edith Romney " 20 

624 Primus in Indis. M. J. Colqu- 

houn 10 

628 Wedded Hands. By the author 

of " My Lady's Folly " 20 

634 The Unforeseen. Alice O'Han- 

lon 20 

641 The Rabbi's Spell. Stuart C. 

Cumberland 10 

643 The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey 

Crayon, Gent. Washington 

Irving 20 

654 " Us." An Old-fashioned Story. 

Mrs. Molesworth 10 

662 The Mystery of Allan Grale. 

Isabella Fj-vie Mayo 20 

668 Half-Way. An Auglo-French 

Romance , . . . . 20 



THE SEASIDE LIBKARY. 



20 



Miscellaneous— Continued. 

669 The Phil^sonhj'- of Whist. 

William Pole 20 

675 Mrs. Dvmond. Miss Thackeray 20 
681 A Singer's Story. May Laffan. 10 

683 The Baelielor Vicar of Nevv- 

forth. Mrs. J. Harcourt-Roe. 20 

684 Last Days at Apswich 10 

692 The Mikado, and Other Comic 

Operas. Written by W. S. 
Gilbert. Composed by Artlwir 
Sullivan .. 

705 The Woman I Loved, and the 

Woman Who Loved Me, Isa 
Blagden 10 

706 A Crimson Stain. Annie Brad- 

shaw 10 

712 For Maimie'B Sake. Grant 

Allen . : 20 

718 Unfairly Won. Mrs. Power 

O'Donoghue 20 

719 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 

Lord Byron 10 

7J^ Mauleverer's Millions. T. We- 

myss Reid 20 

725 My Ten Years' Imprisonment. 

Silvio Pellico 10 

730 The Autobiography of Benja- 
min Franklin 10 

735 Until the Day Breaks. Emily 

Spender 20 

738 In the Golden Days. Edna 

Lyall 20 

748 Hurrish: A Study. By the 

Hon. Emily Lawless 20 

750 An Old Story of My Farming 

'Days. Fritz Renter. 1st half 20 
750 An Old Story of My Farming 

Days. Fritz Reuter. 2d half 20 
752 Jackanapes, and Other Stories. 

Juliana Horatia Ewing 10 

754 How to be Happy Though Mar- 

ried. By a Graduate in the 
Universitj' of Matrimony 20 

755 Mai-geiy Daw 20 

756 The Strange Adventures of Cap- 

tain Dangerous. A Narrative 
in Plain English. Attempted 
by George Augustus Sala — 20 

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OEORGE MUNRO, Muiiro's Piiblisliiii^ House, 

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757 Love's Martyr. Laurence Alma 

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759 In Shallow Waters. Annie Ar- 

mitt 20 

760 No. XIII: or, The Story of the 

Lost Vestal. Emma Mar- 
shall 10 

770 The Castle of Otranto. Hor- 
ace Walpole ■. 10 

773 The Mark of Cain. Andrew 

Lang 10 

774 The Life and Travels of Jlungo 

Park 10 

776 Pere Goriot. Honor6 De Bal- 

zac 20 

777 The Voyages and Travels of 

of Sir John Maundeville, Kt.. 10 

778 Society's Verdict. By the au- 

thor of " My Marriage " 20 

786 Ethel Mildmay's Follies. By au- 
thor of "Petite's Romance". 20 

793 Vivian Grey. By the Rt. Hon. 
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of 
Beaconsfield. First half 20 

793 Vivian Grey. By the Rt, Hon. 
Benjamin Disraeli. Earl of 
Beaconsfield. Second half. . . 20 

801 She Stoops to Conquer, and 
The Good-Natured Man. Oli- 
ver Goldsmith 10 

803 Major Frank. A. L. G. Bos- 

boom-Tonssaint 20 

807 If Love Be Love. D. Cecil Gibbs 20 

809 Witness My Hand. By author 

of " Lady Gwendolen's Tryst " 10 

810 The Secret of Her Life. Ed- 

ward Jenkins 20 

816 Rogues and Vagabonds. By 
George R. Sims, author of 

"'Ostler Joe" 20 

822 A Passion Flower. A Novel. ... 20 
852 Under Five Lakes. M. Quad.. 20 
879 The Touchstone of Peril. A 
Novel of Anglo-Indian Life, 
With Scenes During the Mu- 
tiny. By R. E. Forrest 20 



THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.-Pocket Edition. 

LATEST ISSUES: 



NO. PRICK. 

669 Pole on Whist.... 20 

836 A Point of Honor. By Mrs An- 

nie Edwards 20 

837 A Vagabond Heroine. By Mrs. 

Annie Edwards 10 

838 Ought We to Visit Her? By 

Mrs. Annie Edwards 20 

839 Leah : A Woman of Fashion. 

By Mrs. Annie Edwards 20 

840 One Thing Needful; or, The 

Penalty of Fate. By Miss 31. 
E. Braddon 20 

841 Jet: Her Face or Her Fortune? 

By Mrs. Annie Edwards 10 

842 A Blue-Stocking. By Mrs An- 

nie Edwards 10 

843 Archie Loveil. By Mrs. Annie 

Edwards 20 

844 Susan Fielding. By Mrs. Annie 

Edwards ! 20 

845 Philip Earnscliffe; or, The 

Morals of Maj^ Fair. By Mrs. 
Annie Edwards 20 

846 Steven Lawrence. By Mrs. 

Annie Edwards. 1st half... 20 

846 Steven Lawrence. By Mrs. 

Annie Edwards. 2d half. ... 20 

847 Bad to Beat. By Hawley Smart 10 

848 Mv Friend Jim. ByW. E. Norris 10 

849 A "Wicked Girl. By Mary Cecil 

Hay 20 

850 A Playwright's Daughter. By 

Mrs. Annie Edwards 10 

851 The Cry of Blootl. By F. Du 

Boisgobey. First half 20 

851 The Cry of Blood. By F. Du 

Boisgobey. Second lialf 20 

852 Under Five Lakes ; or, The 

Cruise of the "Destroyer." 
Bv M. Quad 20 

853 A True Magdalen. By Char- 

lotte 51 Braeme, author of 
"DoraThorne" 20 

854 A Woman's Error. By Char- 

lotte M. Braeme, author of 
" Dora Thorne. " 20 

855 The Dynamiter. Robert Louis 

Stevenson and Fanny Van de 
Grifn Stevenson 20*' 

856 New Arabian Niglits. By Rob- 

ert Louis Stevenson 20 

857 Kildee; or. The Sphinx of the 

Red House. Mary E. Br3'an. 

First half 20 

857 Kildee: or, The Sphinx of the 
Red House. JIary E. Bryan. 
Second half 20 



,f886 



PRICK. 

Old lMa''m'selle's Secret. By E. 
Marlitt 20 

Ottilie: An Eighteenth Century 
Idyl. By Vernon Lee. The 
Prince of the 100 Soups. Ed- 
ited by Vernon Lee 20 

Her Lord and Master. By Flor- 
ence Marryat 20 

Mj- Sister the Actress. By Flor- 
ence Marryat 20 

Ugly Barrington. By " The 
Duchess." Betty's Visions. 
By Rhoda Broughton 10 

" My Own Child." By Florence 
Marryat 20 

" No Intentions." By Florence 
Marryat 20 

Written in T'ire. By Florence 
Mari-yat 20 

Miss Harrington's Husband. By 
Florence Marryat 20 

The Girls of Fevershani. By 
Florence Marryat 20 

The Poison of Asps. By Flor- 
ence Marryat 10 

Out of His Reckoning. By 
Florence Mai-ryat .'. 10 

A Bachelor s Blunder. By W. 
E. Norris 20 

A House Party. By "Ouida" 10 

Lady Valworth's Diamonds. By 
" The Duchess " 20 

Mignon's Secret. John Strange 
Winter 10 

Little Tu'penny. By S. Baring- 
Gould 10 

The Touchstone of Peril. By 
R. E. Forrest 20 

The Sou of His Father. By Mrs, 
Oliphant 20 

Mohawks. By Miss M. E. Brad- 
don 20 

Once Again. Bj^ Mrs. For- 
rester 20 

A S'oyage to the Cape. By AV. 
Clark Russell 20 

Les Mis6rables. Victor Hugo. 
Parti 20 

Paston Carew, Millionaire and 
Miser. Mrs. E. Lvuu Linton. 
First half '. 20 

Paston Carew, Millionaire and 
Miser. Mrs. E. Lynn Linton. 
Second half 20 

An Inland Voyage. By Robert 
Louis Stevenson 10 



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